PART III: STARLING.

12

Hezediah Zenkovah. The Sparrowhawk.

Lilapsophobia.

CW: descriptions of violence re: scalping.

Hezediah Zenkovah is in the Capitol.

First order of shit. Hezediah clasps the Vivisector's armour upon her body. She is long made Metal: what is one more exoskeleton of their insane on her back? If the soldiers around her shuffle away, like she's a freight train of radiation: good for them. Hezediah does not care.

She has an armour capable of capsizing reality down. She can fucking blow up Snow with this device, if she so chose to strain herself.

(Her proteges are gone. Rhodos, head a mental hell. Talquin, lover buried and best buddy unburied. Alithyia, live by their jumpwire means. Hezediah's hurricane crackles in-between her lungs, half-here, half-shaking. She's ready to destroy their worlds. She's more than fucking ready.)

Cynane gruffs out game plans, fights, regicides. Heze listens, doesn't listen. Fact of the matter is Snow deserves death. Fact of the matter is she'll distribute it personally.

"Snow may have possession of nuclear weapons," Cynane says, "that we'll be careful to avoid." Cynane coughs, then. She coughs into her fist, and Hezediah raises her eyebrows: because that's blood between their illustrious leader's knuckles.

"What's it matter to you?" Hezediah snorts. Cynane's eyes lift to hers, and she sticks her knuckles away. "What do we have to lose?" Hezediah says, and they're all starin', now. "Four's dead. Friends're dead. Family's," and she adds the bite to her tongue.

Oh, it isn't true. Not all are gone. But what'll they do. Correct Hezediah in her bitterness?

Nobody corrects the hurricane. Nobody dares.

They divide into two groups. Stealth. Responsible for sneaking into Snow's manor and executing him live. Charge. Responsible for taking the brunt of heat upon their bodies.

She's to lead Charge. There goes her Snow-killing dreams. Her regiment's Talquin, Juno, and Alithyia. There goes her proteges, ripe in line to die.

"Welcome back, Alithyia," Hezediah snarks, clasps her on the shoulder. "You've changed."

Alithyia laughs. It's not so hollow. But it is a kind of charged hollow. The hollow of slurry alloys and void-made machinations. The what-she's-become and husk-still-standing kind of hollow.

"Nice you're alive, Zenkovah," Alithyia says. "Thought Xianrith killed you."

Hezediah laughs.

"She never showed her ass," she says. "Metalbitch only shows down in a finale."

The rest of her squad stares. They're looking at her armour. Thinking like who's the Storm to speak, wearin' their metalshit on her soul.

(They don't think that way. Hezediah knows Talquin and Juno and— yes, even Alithyia— to think that way.)

(Still.)

"Argostoli," Hezediah says, and Juno Argostoli stands to stance. He's gone not a long way from his jabbing kid-snark. In spite of his bite, he respects her 'til the stone.

Hezediah unsheathes the blade from her back and hands it to him. Neither Talquin or Alithyiaunderstand the weight. But Juno does. It's the blade she sponsored him durin' his Games. It's her Excalibur, sure. But he's the prophecy-wanting, not her.

(Hezediah has no need for blades, now. She is nuclear fusion, in prime style.)

"Keep it for yourself," Hezediah says, and Juno's grin glints, in his beady dark eyes. He'll make her proud, they promise.

"I want the dead between my teeth. I want the dead killed their best," Hezediah drawls. "When you kill, kill on sight. Let's not disrespect the fallen. I want their fuckin' scalps."

She grins at the last.

Her squad nods.

She won't lose. She is finished in the game of ruined proteges and the dead.

The Metals will regret that they've ever let any of them rise.

(The Metals will regret that they've ever let Hezediah rise.)

They live easy. They die easy.

Hezediah peels their scalps. Pinches under their left ear and tears open their brains. The Peacekeepers die under her attention. Their screams beg for attention.

She slicks her lips with that cold-shaken bleed.

"Where are you fuckers at?" Hezediah roars. She grinds the raw grin by her mouth. This is fresh, this hell-will sundry. This isn't in the Games, this type of breathe.

She's going to bring them into the ground.

(Behind her, her proteges start to die. Juno, felled by arrows. Alithyia, wounded by swords. Talquin, staggering through daggers.)

Fuck the Capitol. Fuck the blige-sucking motherfuckers worth shit salt. Fuck the metal stallions in their racket jackets.

There is a reason why Heze is the storm. She couldn't save Avan. Big fucking deal. Saving in the Games is a dogsbane campaign. But this is the Capitol.

Fuck the apostates astriding their graves. Fuck hellion wreckage and roasting homes.

Here is her warfield. Her godsdamned win is near. Dead men tell no tales and fuck them as well! Their begs better be carved in their bones and when she shakes 'em they better rattle. Their song better be a sob, a dog-digs-tombs tune, Heze-please-spare-me Heze-please-let-me Heze-please-kill-kill-kill-me.

She kills-kills-kills them, locks and loads their flesh, lithe and lithane. They've killed her tears, long before she made it here: Avansika on screen, their soul dead here. She will go forth. She will not stop.

(Behind her, Stealth sneaks through, winds their way to the Capitol.)

She is the Storm. She wracks up their scalps and laughs and waits.

Phaedra Xianrith arrives and Juno Argostoli dies.

From two stories high, Juno jumps down to Phaedra's shoulders. Juno swings Excalibur to nothing. Phaedra crushes his throat.

His blade clatters into debris seas.

(Hezediah Zenkovah is nuclear fusion.)

"Y'know," Hezediah says, "I was having a good day until you showed your face."

"Shame I don't care," Phaedra smirks. "I am sure you've missed me, Zenkovah."

"My happiest day," Hezediah says, "is still the day Sterling exploded you out of your fucking senses."

(Hezediah Zenkovah is an explosion in the making.)

Phaedra snorts. "Where's the Four pride, Zenkovah?"

"Dead in the ditch you were buried in," Hezediah rolls her eyes. "Sorry. Cultural references must be hard for the walking dead."

"Keep amusing yourself. I'll pretend to be impressed."

"Up your acting, asshole."

"I acted dead for two years," Phaedra says, "I deserve a medal."

"The laurels on your burning family mantle not enough?"

"I could afford more."

"With the rubble? Go fucking wild."

(Hezediah Zenkovah is a bomb.)

"The only way I can tolerate you is dead," Phaedra's fingers fall to the scabbard of her blade.

"Makes two of us. The Forgeborn are immortal," Hezediah squeezes her eyes shut. "God, I should'a known some shit was up with you fucked fuckers."

Phaedra's blade raises to Hezediah - if it were any closer, the tip'll tilt her chin up. "Are we not? Our agreement with the Capitol was for a reason. We die, we are revived. We are theirs."

"So you serve them?"

"No. You talk about my legacy as if it were a dead dog," Phaedra's eyes agleam with gold, "But it is alive. Do you know we are, Zenkovah? We are the reasonthe dead do not rest. We are the Drowned."

The Drowned sway, held up by strings yoked by the Commander. All is silent. All is broken. All is gone.

(Hezediah Zenkovah is a supernova.)

Hezediah closes her eyes, her breaths hitching in her lungs. She refuses to fuckin' see them. Her dead proteges. Her failures smeared in a crumbling junkworld.

(Hezediah Zenkovah is a shell. Cynane and Phaedra's propane tank campaign; the counterstain coup-de-main, sugarcane acid rain; rattling, rat-fucking-rattling.)

When she opens her eyes again, they are shining.

(She is thermonuclear, lethal ion, half-life radiation. She is a fallout isotope, swollen in scoria, heavyset melting.)

Reign yourself into fleabane remains, Charge. Make yourself metal and blow yourself up, Charge. Don't whine, Charge. You're theirs, Charge.

If there is one adage that holds true through time, it is this.

(Hezediah Zenkovah is not.)

Hezediah Zenkovah is an avenger. She's a fucking storm-radio, a seadog in chains, a storm-o-war. She is swine caught in rain-chains and oh so humane.

Hezediah draws up rebar from the debris. She draws up Excalibur from cold dead hands. She draws Juno's sword with both hands against her shoulder.

She faces storm-chain commanders and ultramontane soldiers. She faces against the mutts of her Games. In their eyestrain shitstain facial veins and wolfsbane faces. The half-dozen killers of Avansika, whirling down the steel of her blade.

Her snarl bites against her lips, a razor frozen-snow cold. "This is for Alithyia. This is for Soneillon. Talon. Ronan. Nahla. This is for Talquin. Kani. Juno. This is for every-single-one of my proteges you made into puppets. And last but not least,"

"Myself."

Then the hurricane—

begins

to

run.

through —

feigned sealanes and excalibur crushing foam

alkane death in daisy chains

purslane flesh in bedlam chains

the dreadnought rises

into the abyss

— headfirst.

(Raise the waters. Raise the Drowned. Furl your waves. Do Ragnarok, Sparrowhawk.)

This is how the Vulture Rebellion ends for Hezediah Zenkovah.

The Metal troops flush and flow into oblivion and back again: masses upkept by their Commander, stultified by Peacekeepers. They think they can take her.

Hezediah sprints past the feigned sea-lanes, metal against stone, cresting Excalibur through the foam. A feral something twists by her lip, the last touch of a goodbye kiss.

She does not need armour. Nor the nuclear inlaced in its metal. They've forgotten who she is. She is the perfect hurricane, and she is doomed to decay.

Hezediah Zenkovah raises her blade, and screams a war-song.