Chapter Eleven: Death Comes Later
Time passed in the fortress amongst the mountain range where the blue flowers grew.
The delicate, velvet petals held but a hint of shimmery grey, speckling the path on the way to where Hess had taken back over The League of Shadows by force.
All that declined his leadership died by the sword, those that capitulated were spared.
Knees that refused to bend were dislocated and broken.
Throats that refused to speak words of acquiescence were slit.
While Hess secured his throne, becoming the King Spider with his army of locusts, Anja was kept secured, under heavy guard, behind dead bolts and locked up with many keys.
Hess had his most trusted lieutenants keeping watch over Anja and the growing prize in her belly.
He allowed only a handful into the Holy of Holies, the room with the thick door that kept Anja imprisoned, along with Babagorl, her constant light.
The room was sparse, lacked color or even a single bauble to serve as decoration.
A single bed was covered in simple, woolen linen, the mattress firm, stiff.
There was no light except for the high windows and what they allowed to shine through into the room.
The vaulted ceilings had huge beams imbedded, bolstering the infrastructure, along the tallest wall was a vast library.
Anja spent the bulk of her waking moments with a book in hand.
Her and Babagorl would start the day with tea and a simple breakfast; after cleaning up with a pan of water and roughhewn washcloths, they were left unmolested for the bulk of the day.
There was a fireplace that gave off warmth provided one didn't stray too far from the flames.
It was always cold in some of the highest peaks in the world, however despite the wintry sensation that clung to every oxygen molecule, inside Anja's belly, it was as warm as the center of the Earth.
Anja read to Babagorl for hours on end while the little girl stayed close, curled around Anja's steadily swelling belly.
As Anja read to Babagorl, they too ran through the forest with Uncas and in other novels danced and dined with the dead.
Her spoken words put them on the rocking ship, hunted by an apex predator, reading the meaning of life etched in the skin of a tattooed man's back.
As she read about a shamed woman whose name also started with the letter A, across the world, back under the roof she shared with Bane and the children, Bane never received another message from Hess.
He never reached out, just feigned the grief and mourning process.
Bane allowed himself to show weakness as an empty coffin was lowered and interred into the frigidly, hard earth.
Bane knew he was being watched as he walked into the family-owned Bright Star Gardens funeral home.
Hess was pleased as it was reported to him the sheer magnitude of Bane's suffering at the loss of Anja and his unborn child.
All the time that Hess reveled and bathed in Bane's perceived agony, Bane plotted and planned, he was forced to be patient.
He was certain that his heart was going to burst free of his chest from the anticipation when he reached the first temporary camp as he ascended the mountain range where Anja was being held, dodging the blue flowers with his heavy footfalls that persevered and thrived in the harsh conditions.
Bane and his trusted group of travelers, Cain bringing up the rear of the climbing party, pushed themselves to the limit and into physiological oblivion.
They summited faster than advised, pushed their brains to the brink of cerebral edema, almost not enough dexamethasone to keep them from crossing the threshold of ice into death.
The ice would melt beneath their feet, becoming the River Styx as it carried them away, no one would be there to pluck them free by their heels.
As Bane and company continued their trek through the taxing elements, Anja continued to read to Babagorl as her belly stretched and grew from the new life of her son.
When Babagorl napped, Anja busied herself with pulling barbed wire free from where it was shallowly embedded in random parts of the room and walls to be a deterrent for digging an escape tunnel.
Anja carefully wrapped the wire around the wooden handle of a hairbrush that Hess had provided for her, an item of luxury, he considered it a benevolent act.
Over the time it took Bane and his murderous entourage to reach the insulated and reinforced fortress that Hess was now squatting in after his successful coup to take back over the League of Shadows, Anja had a formidable weapon that was comfortable to hold in her hand.
She kept the wire-wrapped brush under a haphazardly folded blanket by the fireplace, at a casual glance it merely looked like a blanket to provide a buffer over the unforgivingly hard floor.
Anja spoke to the baby constantly, often in the language of her father, her first spoken language. She rubbed her belly as she read to Babagorl and the baby, not knowing if a son or daughter was growing in her womb.
Hess walked in on an overcast afternoon, finding Babagorl napping, the side of her face resting on Anja's belly.
"How sweet," he sneered, his thin lips twisting uglily.
Anja closed the book she was holding, setting it aside while being mindful of Babagorl sleeping.
Hess walked around the room, looking at the neatly made bed and empty cups and plates from their morning meal.
"I read your father's work," Hess said abruptly, bringing his eyes from Anja's belly to her wide, unblinking eyes.
"And?"
"I know how much that Demoness used your father, how your husband killed your father," Hess let hang in the air.
Anja pressed her lips together, shifting on the sloppily folded blanket.
"That is accurate," she finally said.
Hess inhaled sharply, "I read in interviews with your father that you spent your life growing up in the lab with him, that you even had a bedroom at the lab where he learned to tame splitting atoms and bult a chemical umbrella to protect from nuclear fallout."
Anja shrugged, "I did spend a lot of time in the lab," she admitted, "but there were many parts of the lab that were off limits to me. He didn't share a lot of the intricacies of his work with me," Anja said, lying directly to Hess's face.
Hess cocked an eyebrow, finding it difficult to believe that Doctor Pavel wouldn't have shared his knowledge and secrets with his only daughter.
Hess would've been right to imagine that Anja had books, notepads and scribbles on paper that offered but a glimpse of his genius.
He would've paid an obscene amount to get his hands on the hidden journal that Anja held close, her father's last recorded work, some written in a code for Anja's eyes only.
Hess thought of the vast network he navigated within, the money up for grabs, what government's would pay for information on nuclear fusion.
Anja was reminded of her early days within Bane's company at Hess's next words.
"What did you father teach you, are you able to build or manipulate a reactor?"
Anja chuckled, "father kept a lot of his work close," she continued to lie, her thoughts moving to the framed pages of her father's journal that hung on the walls in the house of her family.
So many valuable, nuclear equations and answers out in the open, hanging on a wall that was painted a brilliant accent color.
As Hess deepened his questioning of Anja, growing more specific in his fishing expedition within her knowledge basin, close to the fortress, Bane arrived a few hours walk south.
They stopped in a small village that many mountaineers did, needing to refresh, find some semblance of restoration.
Bane didn't want to pause their journey, didn't want to close his eyes, refused to listen to anything that would mean stopping his forward momentum.
Cain stood his ground, made Bane understand that even he needed the rest, that approaching Hess and The League now and in his current condition would make death likely.
The people of the village had always lived symbiotically with The League, now with Hess's encroachment, the fat parasite that had taken over, people in the village suffered.
Children went missing.
Children held a great value for so many reasons in a myriad of marketplaces.
Hess liked children and had been fine accepting Babagorl to accompany Anja, a bonus, there were so many ways he could sell her, purposes that outnumbered the stars.
In the heavily defended fortress, Hess began to tell Anja of all the different manners in which he could use Babagorl, regaled her with how the value of a child was calculated, how the price catapulted to the very stratosphere with proof of purity.
Hess deepened the nastiness of his diatribe, leveling further threats to what he could do with Babagorl, further wrapping in the unborn baby. Hess grew angrier, his mood darkening as Anja's face gave away nothing.
Anja thought of pulling her weaponized brush free to smash his face in, imagining his lips splitting under the barbed wire, his flesh becoming wet, pulpy, a peach that had been ripped open.
Hess would tire of toying with Anja, ugly names spilled from between his lips before he slammed and locked the door.
In the small village, Bane and his tight group of men sharpened knives, loaded firearm magazines, ensured the barrels were clean and that there would be no delays in the trigger-response.
Cain nearly dropped his steaming cup of tea when the sound of an approaching caravan outside, rising to his feet a moment before Bane.
Cain was shocked to his core to walk out of their cramped room to face a sea of the murderous Devil's Children, the purple of their flag was vibrant amongst their mud-colored clothing.
"They are here at my request," Bane said as the leader of the DC approached.
Cain watched the two men confer for a minute, overhearing enough to learn that Bane had promised the Devil's Children their fill of the blood, meat, and spoils at the fortress where Hess now called home.
The DC had never traveled so far but Bane's words had made them salivate, the riches on top of the mountain were enough to draw them so far from home.
A small smile teased the corners of Bane's scarred lips as he saw Cain's open disdain for the murderous DC painted across his features.
"We will kill them all after," Bane murmured before they marched off to war to end Hess's necrotic reign.