- WARS OF THE ROSES -
- Act IX -
- Sif's Plains of Splendour -
"At my prompt," came the Red Rose's growl, amidst a sea of roaring sparks and flame.
"Just like the old times of our ancestors, our founding saints," was the White Rose's reply.
"You mean our sworn enemies now," retorted the weary voice of her Yellow counterpart.
"Who they are means nothing now. We will avenge our soeurs' humiliation at their hands," snarled Youko, gripping the Chinensis longsword tighter. "Rush Yumi-chan and force the Rose saints out of her body." And without another blink, she had dashed forth, sprinting like her fur boots were carried by the hooves of Sleipnir. Sei and Eriko followed her charge, raising their blades and mustering a final stand against the deities inside Yumi. Even as their loyal petite soeurs lay or cowed, defeated, around them. Even Kashiwagi and Yuki were broken and demoralized, sprawled on the ground.
Yuki scrabbled up vainly to join their charge, but Kashiwagi caught him and held him back. "It's too dangerous from hereon, President," said the Chancellor calmly. "I suggest a healthy sense of self-preservation to compliment your concern for your sister. If you would follow my advice, I would suggest you flee Lillian forever with our remaining ships and reserves."
"I can't," replied Yuki, staring, enthralled and almost hypnotized, at the sight of the Roses' last stand.
As they expected, the survival or fall of Lillian's three noble kingdoms would ultimately rest on the strong shoulders of their offices. But the Rose saints, so close to their final triumph, weren't about to lose the vessel of their reincarnation.
"Ancient beasts of treasures and fangs," barked the omnipotent Draugur in a trinity of voices, raising her hands. Her armour had been blown away, her robes torn and tattered. But the breath of the living deities animated Yumi's dying form yet. "We didn't bring these two siblings together as the instrument of our return for it to go to naught. Yuki, the catalyst. Yumi, the vessel. It's all complete. Now turn your firebreath upon these mortal shells."
"Why, Rose saints?" shouted Rei. "What great sin did we commit to deserve overthrowing by our own ancestors?"
Yumi glared at the scattered retinue of young women. "You took our legacy - our unified Kingdom of Lillian - and sundered it into three warring empires. How dare you call yourselves our heirs? Did you not think we would seize back the legacy that you wasted away?"
"It is true that we inherited a divided realm, and for years we fought with no other purpose than for our own noble house." Eriko smiled. "The invasion by Hanadera - a prophesied foreign power - seems to have reunified these isles. And now, by your own promise, you came to sweep away all the gathered powers before you, and reclaim these lands through President Yuki's sister."
The dragons circling above the ruined battlefield hissed as they heard their goddesses' commands. Thunder boomed and lightning stabbed through the firmament as red clouds of blood and nothingness gathered above the epicentre of the continental cataclysm. The dragons only began belching fire onto what was left of the knights and Hanadera soldiers, when the Roses thrust their gleaming swords as one at Yumi. The fires of primeval Lillian tore through the moaning, scattered phalanxes of Hanadera musketeers, reaping their lives like wheat harvested with a sickle. The lady knights of Chinensis and Foetida fared no better, their swords, makeshift muskets, and horses consumed by a flamestorm that blackened the grassless hills. The Chinensis and Foetida banners lay scattered, tattered and torn, amidst a sea of ladies' carcasses.
It was surprising that there was anything breathing left, thought the Red Baroness to herself, gazing around the blasted plains in a kind of macabre wonder.
On all fours, she crawled to Shimako, who was observing the final battle keenly. "In the end, our noble titles couldn't save us, could they?" wheezed Rei, the Yellow Duchess, who was resting in the embrace of her petite soeur. Yoshino gazed unseeingly at her peer, the unimposing, slight Yumi, whose eyes swam with the celestial lights and the terror of primal divinity. Old, old power! Power that seeped from the blood of long-dead valkyries and butchered demons of untamed Lillian, of the poison from Saint Gigantea's arrowtips, of the stones of Saint Foetida's longsword, and the spikes of Saint Chinensis' mace. Yumi cackled eerily, but mixed in with the haunting laughter were the screams of a young girl, crying the name of her elder sister - "onee-sama".
"Yumi," whispered Rosa Chinensis en bouton despairingly.
Surrounded by the inferno that was tearing down her entire world, Sei tried to cut at Yumi's head, who coolly blocked the blow with her hand. Her fingers bled profusely, but the goddesses within the Draugur didn't seem to care. Sei glanced around her. She sneered as great gales began to fan the flames around them. "So this is it. Endgame," she bellowed, as the towers of fire engulfed the remaining knights and Hanadera soldiers, swallowing them up forever. She slashed at Yumi again, who this time ducked, only to be forced back by Eriko's lunge. She spun back, intercepting Eriko's wild cutting with her ruined arms, but already Youko and Sei had outflanked her, and their blades were pointed directly at Yumi's heart -
Yumi vomited out a stream of starfire, which Youko and Sei hastily evaded. Youko wasted no time as she made a final lunge and plunged her longsword into Yumi's chest. A deafening scream, like a banshee's, erupted from the Draugur's mouth. "What are you waiting for?" Youko barked at her peers. "Join me," she gritted, struggling to keep a hold on her sword as Yumi struggled to free herself, "just as they joined each other to kill the demons of old, so you two must join me to expel them."
Rosa Foetida roared, heeding Youko's plea. Her sword punctured the Draugur's stomach and emerged behind her spine. And Sei completed the assault, stabbing Yumi tottered, as if on the verge of collapse, and for a moment, the Roses really did dare to believe they had, at long last, subdued even the vessel of three divinities.
"Onee-sama!" screamed Yoshino, and Shimako did likewise. But Sachiko only cried Yumi's name in despair.
The flying dragons above howled at the imminent defeat of their true masters, and they dispersed, flapping their wings sullenly, as if deprived of a great coveted treasure. They bore no grudge for the Roses, for they weren't spiteful beasts - they had simply been following the loudest siren call. "Come back," rasped Yumi, as the three Roses twisted their blades painfully inside her. "Don't abandon us."
But the dragons, sensing that their stake in this battle alongside their onetime masters had collapsed, fled, not wishing to anger the women they believed would triumph...
The Roses and their boutons.
The tide had turned with Yumi's long-overdue incapacitation. Her living corpse had been despoiled by her own comrades, for that was the only way force the goddesses to relinquish control over her. "Damn you all, children," rasped the three Rose saints together through Yumi's ruined mouth, her torn lips. "The new world of Lillian should have been here."
The Roses roared as they yanked their swords out of Yumi's bleeding body, which fell onto the grass noisily, wetly. Sei dropped her blade, and Youko and Eriko did likewise. They looked away, unable to bear it any longer. They could no longer stand to listen to Sachiko's futile screams as Yumi sagged and slumped, her body at its final limits. From her quivering mouth emerged three wisps, small, diminutive wraiths, that suddenly engorged and scattered their forms around the noblewomen. Yoshino gasped, and Shimako's hands tightened on her axes.
Three pairs of haunting eyes peered out from the threefold mists.
"The Rose saints," spat Sachiko. "You have brought calamity to my petite soeur." With each shrieking word, the spirits shuddered, already weakened, and now cowering at the voice of the bouton. The Red Baroness glared at the hateful eyes of Saint Chinensis - blood red, the colour as vivid as Saint Foetida's sunflower-yellow, and Saint Gigantea's pearl-white...
"Begone!" bellowed Rei, and the hovering mists around them quaked again. "You are of the old world. We have no loyalty, no reverence to you any longer. Now we'll cast you into the void. Had you stayed up in Valhalla, perhaps you wouldn't have to forfeit your seats at the Hall of Heroines."
"Lillian has truly degenerated with each passing line of our tripartite clan," groaned Saint Chinensis spitefully.
"Excommunicating yourselves from Valhalla just to challenge us, when you know that spirits cannot survive here without being housed. This was suicide, goddesses," said the White Rose. "Saint Gigantea, you can die together with your beloved two, with your dreams of a once-glorious past. If we must burn our bridges with that past, then so be it," declared Sei, clearing her throat. "Banished from Yumi-chan's body, no longer able to ascend to the Hall of Heroines - a perpetual limbo, a hellish coma - your degenerate heirs are well up to the challenge of meeting your sadism."
She turned to Yuki. "Pick up your sword," she snapped.
Yuki blinked, wriggling out of Kashiwagi's arms, and scooped up his blade. He looked at the dying spirits, understanding what needed to be done.
"I hurt you with my sword's light even when you were inside Yumi," he growled. "Now that you're out here and vulnerable - "
He raised his sword, and that eagle's shriek, that artificial, Renaissance light shone across the plains -
Sei's eyes widened as she suddenly clenched her fists, and she shrieked at the top of her lungs, so that her throat burned and her eyes almost watered -
"Disappear - "
Trembling one last time, the Prime Roses screamed as their incorporeal bodies scattered and dispersed in the ten directions at the pitch of a human bellow, and the punishing light of Yuki's sword. The spirits faded and melted from this world, already formless and now shattered forevermore. Yumi's eyes fluttered as the goddesses died, their presence excised on the material plane. They had fallen from Valhalla, bet everything on this final battle, but had lost to the hastily assembled alliance of the kingdoms they founded four centuries ago.
"Well-fought," rasped Saint Foetida amidst the brilliance of Yuki's blade, her yellow irises closing for eternity.
"I only realize now, my dear sisters," muttered Saint Chinensis in reluctant concession, as her body and will were shredded by the illumination. "Our heirs are still strong, loathe we may be to admit it. They need no gods to rule over them."
"But we do need warmth, even we who fell from Valhalla for a final and prophesied battle," whispered Saint Gigantea, her hands reaching out and clutching Saint Chinensis and Saint Foetida's. The three women smiled at each other shyly, and laughed heartily, fulfilled at the fight they had put up against warriors they thought unworthy. Perhaps just this once, being proved wrong was actually quite pleasing.
The Rose saints hugged each other tightly, before their consciousnesses were scattered to the wind as manna, nourishment for the world of the living.
Screaming Yumi's name repeatedly, Sachiko rushed to her petite soeur, kneeled, and cradled the doomed girl gingerly. Tears blinded her from seeing that Yumi was smiling. "How dare they do this to you..."
"The great threat within me has gone, onee-sama. I can serve you and the House of Chinensis with a clean conscience," whispered Yumi, her body hollowed out viciously by the dead, hateful spirits. "I don't want to die yet." But without the goddesses' sustaining powers weaving her stuttering organs, her body simply failed. She should have died long ago. And now, at long last, she did. She fell silent, her ravaged heart beating one last time, her body resting from its unnatural exertion.
Shimako lowered her head, closing her eyes, while Yoshino turned away. Rei simply stared at the crying Sachiko sombrely, until a descending light caught her eyes.
"Red Baroness, look!" she gasped, pointing up.
Sachiko choked, glancing up in disbelief as a hallucination of her dead petite souer took her and embraced her. But it was no illusion, for the Roses had fallen silent in wonder, and Rei's finger was shaking. "Ein... Einherjar!" breathed the Yellow Duchess. "Yumi-chan, you... you have earned a place in the Hall of Heroines? Have the Valkyries of lore, invisible to unworthy eyes, already chosen you?"
Youko sank to her knees, awestruck. Yumi's spirit - no, this was Yumi herself in all her postmortem glory - having died in battle, had joined the ranks of Valhalla as an Einherjar. How could they have forgotten her bravery, her steadfastness in serving the Red Baroness despite her possession? wondered Youko to herself, surprised at her own shock at seeing what she had always believed - that those who had fallen in just battle would be sure to attain their reward in the merrymaking beyond. Yumi, resplendent in the armour of the hereafter, looked down at the amazed, astonished women. "I've brought much grief to this continent, and to you all," she said, and her unmistakable voice echoed across the hellish Elysium of this battlefield, carried along by the embers of the departed dragons.
"Yumi," whispered Sachiko, leaving behind her lover's corpse and taking a single, fearful step forward. She reached our her hand. "I don't dare to believe it. It is as if nothing has changed. You are just... radiant."
"You can't touch me where you are, onee-sama," said Yumi cryptically, her angelic voice distant. She did not meet Sachiko's fingers with her own, as if she knew it would be futile. She beamed, gazing deep into Sachiko's trembling pupils. "You never will be able to be with me, as long as you are separated from me by the veil of life. But I will sing your praises forever in Valhalla, and I know we'll meet again, for you are fearless and will be favoured by the Valkyries." She smiled, and it wasn't a sad one at all. "Goodbye, onee-sama. Goodbye, everyone. It was short and painful. But I haven't a single regret. I will watch over you all from here. Until you join me on high, here in the Hall..."
Yumi's body slowly began to rise. Up, up, and up she went, her form swept away by an unseen, uncontrollable hand. Sachiko screamed in protest as she reached out her hand, even as she knew that it was futile.
"I will wait for you," cooed Yumi, waving at Sachiko and the women she was leaving behind. Her ghostly hands rose high above her head as she closed her eyes, her feet leaving the mortal skies forever.
"Yumi-san!" screamed Yoshino, and the other women cried her name, too. Sachiko shrieked one last desperate screech of protest as Yumi allowed herself to be engulfed by the widening pillar of light that had gently broken through the burning sky.
"A noble death to complete a short but happy life..."
Those were the last celestial words of gratitude Sachiko would ever hear.
The Red Baroness stared down at the still corpse of Yumi. She hadn't uttered a word since her petite soeur breathed her last. She hadn't dared to exhale. For surely Yumi would wake up and come running back into her arms. But that was the real delusion. Yumi was alive and well. They just couldn't reach each other. Not until the end of days, when she also departed.
Yes, there was hope. They would meet again. But it just seemed so far away...
"Is this a happy ending?" muttered Sei. She glanced at Youko, who shook her head in despair. "Is this any ending at all?"
"No, onee-sama," whispered Shimako. "It's not."
Yuki wandered back to Kashiwagi, slightly dazed, numb, and dumb. Sachiko suddenly giggled, allowing herself a shrill laugh that didn't befit her. "How would you like to kill the Red Baroness, Yuki-kun...?"
Yuki blanched as Kashiwagi stared at Sachiko. "He can't do that," he said calmly. "Not now."
"What are you saying, Sachiko!" cried Rei. "Don't scare us like that."
"Then leave these Isles!" shrieked Sachiko at Kashiwagi and Yuki, tears pouring down her bloodstained face. "What are you still doing here? Leave!"
Yuki bowed his head, his honest tears also melding with the blood below him.
Kashiwagi turned his back. "I will announce our withdrawal," he muttered. "Even if we were to maintain our foothold and gain a colony here, we wouldn't have the strength to defend it against your forces." He grimaced, exhaustion manifesting in lines that creased his otherwise perfect face. "We have been shattered, brought to our knees thanks to this prophecy of war."
"It's just as well," said Yuki quietly. "I thought this was just a battle between a desperate brother and a lost sister. Now I'm returning without her. It's just another reminder of how much of a failure I've been."
The Roses stood in mournful silence as Sachiko sank to her knees, beside her sword and Yumi's cold, bloody corpse. Her onetime enemies gathered around her, united in sympathy and grief. Rei placed a shoulder on the Red Baroness's shoulder. The Hanaderians would leave, broken and beaten, denied their desperate hope. But that gave no cause for celebration. A soeur had died a most painful death, and Yumi's final appearance would haunt their hearts for the rest of their days.
One year later. Chinensis Palace.
Decked in loose-fitting red robes, Sachiko stood at her quarters' balcony, overlooking the rolling hills of her domain.
Her eyes were no longer dead, but they still betrayed uncertainty.
Thousands of Chinensis and Foetida knights.
All of Sei's boyars, and most of her starving serfs.
And Yumi herself.
Those were the lives, the cost Sachiko had to bear for a reborn Lillian, a reformed Lillian. A strange new place, and a peculiar palace where she reigned as the Red Rose, ascendant, supreme among all Chinensis noblewomen. Only that her nobility held no meaning anymore. She had forfeited her title of Baroness, and her Rose peers, Rei and Shimako, and relinquished theirs as well. Instead of imperial power, they would be vested with democratic authority, and answer to an interesting new institution called Parliament.
The Constitution drafted by their predecessors and passed on to them was aggressively aimed at curbing not only the authority of the High Queen (although Shiori had never abused her previous privileges), but also at consigning their monarch to a figurehead's role. Losing their autocratic privileges meant that the previous generation of Roses had stepped down. All future Roses would only reign for one year. That was the most important check and balance Lillian's kingdoms had learned from the Hanaderian system.
And while the three kingdoms were once more rivals, at least there were the proper protocols for observing war and peace. And for now, the republics of Chinensis, Foetida, and Gigantea were at peace.
Sachiko's eyes glimmered as her hand gripped the stone balcony. The spring sun felt wonderful against her skin. "We must continue the reform of our noble armies. I will never prefer any other blade than the Chinensis sword passed down since ancient days. Yet Shimako has been busy rebuilding and modernizing Gigantea's forces," she muttered to herself, grimacing. "Losing all their boyars was one thing. To lose Goronta, the World Serpent, to these dead goddesses... their greatest weapon was stolen from them.
"I hope this is only the beginning of our renewal. The beginning of something better. The beginning of our own renaissance. The reforms forced on our nobility by Hanadera's invasion will bear fruit." She gritted her teeth as the tears from her wounded memories began to flow.
"My Yumi's death will not be in vain."
They may have instituted new reforms, new armies, and new governments. But with the Rose saints excised forever, the old war resumed.
It would be an age of rejuvenation.
The age of noblewomen governed by a constitutional monarchy.
Empire through enlightenment, by three new Roses.
Rule by republic.
- DUSK FALLS ON THE FEUDAL EPOCH, BUT SOMETHING NEW TAKES ITS PLACE... -
A/N: For about six years now - four if you only count Marimite fanfiction - penning my random fantasies, be they in-canon or unbearably outlandish, has been my favourite escape away from the realities of life. I've always loved experimenting, and while I do think some planning needs to take place before any kind of story (original or fanfic), my favourites have always come about at a whim, and I just ride the roller-coaster until the time is right to hop off.
I've left this AU deliberately open-ended because for me it's been like a sandbox. The quirkiness has taken on a life of its own, but after a string of hiatus'ed projects some years ago, I promised I would never leave another piece unfinished. So I'm relieved this hasn't been the case for my time with Marimite so far. ^.^
Thank you for reading, and if you're interested, catch me at "The Wordsmith's Flower", the current story I'm writing. :)