Everything felt numb to Quintia. She could not feel anything, not even the pain of being dragged along the path back into the base of the Knights Templar, the rough sand and gravel carving paths in her once flawless jet black and scarlet armor and the grips of the Templars restraining her digging into her wrists.
"The Grand Master will not like this, but at least we caught one of them."
"What about the other one, sir?"
The other one.
Sentus Optimus, her creator and Commander's lieutenant, had supposedly escaped. Such was truly a relief, seeing what chaos had transpired when the Templars finally found their hiding location in the Skull Mountain.
Her void - like eyes gazed ahead, the rest of the conversation between the Templar soldier restraining her and their leader falling short of her attention.
Memories replayed through her processor, from start to end like the recorded hologram messages that the Armada occasionally used for transferring information between the worlds.
There was blood, shouting, and the Templars had rushed at the two of them from nearly every direction, brandishing their swords and their muskets and axes and spears, calling for their blood in retribution for what the Armada had done in the past against their faction. Seeing how her creator Ulysses, or Kane the Second as he was currently better known to be, was an assassin, Quintia suspected they also had done this to strike back at him in retribution for what he had accomplished against them before.
She and Sentus Optimus had fought with everything they had, snapping necks and shattering skulls, other times simply breaking the spines of whoever dared to challenge them. Bodies piled up around them like literal walls of flesh, walls growing with each of the waves of Templar Knights rushing at them with the full intent to slaughter them both.
Quintia had lost count of the number of humans she killed after approximately ten minutes.
It was normally a short span of time, the secondary Praetorian commander had thought with a bitter note, yet it had felt like eternity had passed.
And in that very second, she had known what had to be done.
She had fought her way to Optimus' side, breaking bones and leaving the poor Templar fools writhing on the ground from the pain: the copious amounts of spilled blood staining her once flawless white hands a crimson red not unlike the shade of her armor.
"Eseguire, io ti coprirà ."
The co - commander of the Royal Guards had chosen her native language, whispering the command to Optimus without a second thought. She did not care if this placed her at high risk of getting captured by the Templars, not to mention that Optimus was virtually unharmed while she bore more than just a few wounds from being in the Templars' captivity.
So Sentus Optimus had fled amidst the chaos and pandemonium, and it was only in that moment that Quintia Presidos realized how alone she was. There was no one coming to back her up, no one coming to save her from the fate which seemed so inevitable at this moment in time.
Zero percent possibility of surviving this ordeal. There are enemies far and wide, and you are naught but a single soldier among a sea of enemies to the Armada. There is no use in fighting at this point.
It should have brought out the infernal serpent known as fear once again, but it had not - instead, she could only feel a sort of calmness within her innermost programming. Her battle functions had not been impeded in any way, as she was still capable of looking around and finding the weak points of each and every one of the Templar soldiers swarming her.
That was, until a length of chains was wound around her torso, ensnaring her arms by her sides.
Quintia did not fight those chains.
Perhaps she could have broken out of them if she had tried hard enough, although it would have served little purpose. She had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide in this chaos, the Templars would still find and hunt her down even if she managed to do so.
This brought Quintia back into reality.
One of the Templars dragging her along had pushed her, and her armored form made an audible sound as she was thrown before the golden throne of the Templar Grand Master Atticus Mercilus.
"Clever one you are, Quintia Presidos, you and your allies."
Mercilus had spat out the words, completely shedding the guise of feigned friendliness that he had adorned when he first stepped into the chamber in which he had firsted confined her; dark eyes meeting the voids in the female Royal Guard's mask - face.
"Although I must admit, it was a rather well thought out move on the gods-be-damned traitor Joseph Davenport's part, or should I say Militus Secundus the Armada spy?"
Secundus.
The name of the Armada spy had echoed within her processor in a fashion that could only be compared to an echoing shout. Yet, similar to when she was fighting for her very existence no more than exactly thirteen minutes before, Quintia felt no fear even when the very leader of the entire Templar Order glared down upon her from his throne.
"Your silence is rather annoying, Commander."
Quintia simply matched the iron glare of the Templar Grand Master. There was a part of her that was rather sorely tempted to lash back with some sort of bitter retort, something about how truly hopeless their attempt at fighting the might of the Valencian Armada was. Quintia bit it back, simply continuing to glare back at him with those unyielding voids.
"Answer me, spawn of Septimus."
Atticus' fists clenched, a vein popping out on his forehead.
"I will restate what I have previously said, Grand Master, I will not give you any information regarding the Armada. Your attempts to resist the power of the Supreme Commander Kane the Second are futile, it will not be very long before his forces bring this island to ruin."
A brief flash of anger appeared in Atticus' eyes.
"It does appear that you have clearly forgotten the very fact that I hold your fate in the palm of my hand at this very moment, Royal Guard, I can order my soldiers to rip your scrap metal body apart with a twitch of my fingers. Do you truly wish to test my patience?"
"I am a clockwork officer."
Quintia straightened herself to the very best of her ability.
"Threaten me with death all you want, but I shall never betray my Commander and creator."
A single gloved fist slammed down on his throne's armrest, Mercilus' boots clacking rather noisily as the Templar strode over to her.
The impact of the Atticus' ferocious kick sent her tumbling back onto her back, a tremor of pain shooting through her frame, athough Quintia paid it no attention.
"You've tested my patience to its limit, spawn of Septimus, there is a reason why even your dear Commander of the Armada still has nightmares about my hand! Take her to the torture chamber!"
So my termination is to come in agony? I suppose this is a fitting price, being a soldier of the Armada, it is my duty to remain loyal to him until the end. At least I have made contributions to His Majesty's cause in my short time of function.
Barely more than a year, she recalled, she was in function for barely more than a year. While it was not exactly inaccurate to say that her current mindset was extremely pessimistic, as the humans would have said,, was there really any way out for her? Quintia doubted such.
She barely flinched when the two Templar brutes threw her into the same chamber as before; simply meeting each of their helmeted gazes upon the removal of her armor and undertunic once again, the latter tearing the just barely healed synthetic flesh off of her back once more. It had been impossible to prevent the blood from the festering wounds on her back and flesh from fusing together, like some sort of glue had been applied, after so long.
There was still no way to prepare herself for the pain, the pain that ripped all other thoughts from the depths of her processor.
RED ALERT.
Quintia's frame lurched at the searing pain lashing across her stomach; the barbed tails of the whip tearing chunks of flesh off of her, carving deep gouges in other places. Drops of her blood spilled over her now scarred white flesh with the brilliance of rubies. It was a surreal sensation, for a lack of a better word, to see the fluid sustaining her system flowing out of the wound.
Another lash.
Nine more gouges ripped into her flesh.
Each of them bit deeper than the previous ones, and many cut deeply enough to expose her innermost circuits for her to see. Then and only then did the pain register within Quintia's processor. It was useless at this point to keep the screams from spilling out of her lips.
"Look at you, the Commander of the Royal Guards, reduced down to this."
Quintia just barely had the strength to look up right into the face of the man known as Atticus Mercilus.
"Vai farti fottore."
Her vocalizer sputtered, threatening to give out almost entirely on her. It did not matter, however, not when she had managed to spit those words out in the face of her creator's arch - enemy, for she truly had nothing else to lose.
And if her termination could possibly mean that her creator would become empowered enough to end this man, to end the Knights Templar Order once and for all, then she would let it be.
Atticus' eyes narrowed.
"Just like your creator, Quintia Presidos, you are a fool to defy me."
His wrist flicked, the strike from his scourge burning ten times more than the ones delivered by the brutes. By this point, the Royal Guard could only utter a weak groan, alarm signals flashing before her as her processor, as every inch of her frame, her being screeched at her to move out of the way of her tormentor's weapon.
RED ALERT, RED ALERT!
"Have you ever seen the scars I have left on your Commander's body? Those multitudes of scars on his back and on his chest? Yes, I was the one who had left all of those, I was the one who had left them on him when he had fallen into my hands seven years ago like a pathetic weakling."
Atticus' voice had a sort of echo with each stroke of his wrist, with every stream of blood gushing out of her wounds. Quintia Presidos found she had never wished more for death and termination.
With every stroke of the scourge, Quintia's vision swam even more. Strength left her limbs, and it was not too long until the chains around her wrists became the only things holding her up: her legs having long given out from underneath her.
"Pathetic, you really are pathetic, just like Septimus!"
That voice-!
Quintia's head snapped up with renewed strength. She recognized the voice just about all too well. No other man in the Spiral bore this despicable voice, aside from the man known to the Valencian Armada as "public enemy number one," Adrian Devereaux himself. Even though she did not harbor the same kind of hatred against Atticus as her commander Ulysses did, Quintia could still feel the emotion of disgust within herself.
He was the coward here, not her, she cognitively chanted, over and over again at least she had honor and she had will, unlike this coward-!
And now we finally see what has happened to Quintia in all this time. Yep, things aren't looking so good for her, isn't it? Poor girl, only been in function so long and already got handed something like this...
Reviews are much appreciated :D laters!
-Hades