Order and Chaos

Take the armor and sword but use it to save the world!

I rubbed my throat as I felt the false hydration returning my vocal faculties. "Okay," I said, hoarsely. I crawled under the top half of the suit, rolled over on my back, and stood up into it as they slid it down onto me. I looked around as much as my limited mobility was allowed. There was no bottom half. Ridiculous. I hadn't seen a single whole suit of armor since I left the castle. Now I was just walking around in a pair of tidy-whities and an inordinately ornate platemail breastplate with arms and a kitty-cat-ear helmet like a total idiot who looks like a jackass. At least it was comfortable.

"Would you join us for lunch?" said the high priestess, tossing a ball of yarn up and down in the air. "It would give you time to recuperate." She accidentally dropped the ball of yarn and went chasing it under a building. She was stuck.

I coughed. "Okay."

Their dining hall was large, and it attempted to be impressive, but it was nothing compared to the one back home. I tucked into my salmon and saucer of milk, using my sword as a knife, while two citizens massaged and applied lotion to my feet. I was seated at one thin end of the table, the spot for the privileged guest. Literally every citizen of the town ate simultaneously at this one, long table, which was quite a noisy commotion — but I could see the corresponding spot at the opposite end of the table was empty.

Then, one at a time, the citizens finished their salmon, then ceased their conversations and their lapping of milk and their clanking of silverware. When they were all finished you could hear a pin drop. Or, in my case, the fork clank against the edge of my plate.

The god himself entered, arms raised. He had taken the form of a humanoid calico and was wearing a fancy get-up complete with cape. His followers began to creepily mewl. He took the seat at the other end of the table, and suddenly the hundreds of citizens flocked to him and began grooming him with their tongues, climbing over themselves in their fervor.

"It's nice to meet you in person, Mary," he said. He was on the other side of the hall, but his voice rang out as clearly as if he were at my side.

"Shouldn't you be at the battle with my father?" I shouted.

"Why would I put myself out on a limb like that?" he said. "What would I do? Hang in there? Honestly, these other gods are just kamikaze if you ask me... Mm. Friends, could I have some private time with our special guest?"

The citizens filtered out quickly. The lights dimmed.

"I take it you've already heard an earful from De?" he said.

"How did you know?"

"You just left from that monastery of hers and you're wearing briefs," Felus said, digging in to his own salmon now. "How much did she fill you in?"

"Not much," I said, coldly. "She said the gods were going to cause an apocalypse, but that only the cats would go. Then she said to come here."

"Here?" said Felus. "This place didn't exist until a couple hours ago."

"Uh, she just said west."

"Purrfect," said Felus, who was suddenly right beside me. "Her and I, we're... sort of accomplices."

"Sort of?" I said.

"Well... she sold me down the river. Neither of us WANTED the apocalypse to happen, then she went and talked the rest of the gods down to just ridding the world of cats as a compromise! You know how she is, she can just blab, blab, blab, talk your ears off, run verbal circles around you until you think black is white and up is down."

"Uh..."

"Now that's awful, isn't it?" he said. "Killing cats, honestly... it's just cruel. The only way, as I see it, to save all of catdom is to convince the other gods to direct their wrath at another target. A weakened one..."

My sword began to glow. I wrapped both my hands around it.

"If anyone can do this, it's someone with the blood of the Vindictus," said Felus. "Mary, kill all humans."

I lunged at Felus and chopped off his head in seconds flat, just like I had been trained. God blood stained my briefs and sword.

"Like father like daughter," he laughed and coughed out as he expired, out of his head a good yard away from his body. He wasn't the brightest of gods.

The dining hall, the city, and all of its citizens disappeared, leaving only my armor, my sword, and Felus' body. I fell onto the clay on my hands and knees, once more exhausted and oh-so-hot. Bastard didn't even use real lotion or milk!

I discarded the telltale cat-ears helmet, fashioned my old rags into makeshift shoes, and re-embarked on my trek through the desert. There was a lot of time to think. I had never directly killed anyone before, and now I had fell a god. Was I really becoming my father? I could no longer see behind me the mountains and the monastery. I required a goodly amount of chapstick. The white suit of armor covering my top half was like an oven. I wished I could leave it behind, but even a disguised princess could not turn her nose up at decency like that. At least I left the helmet behind, leaving a place for the heat to escape upwards through, and I was rid of armpit hair and, for that matter, hair on my head. Sweat flopped off my brow at astonishing speeds when I didn't have eyebrows there to slow it. I tried to wipe my forehead with my forearm and accidentally burnt myself on my platemail arms. If I stood in one place for long enough, it would surely turn into a mud puddle. I wish I could put my nosepaint back on without everyone knowing I was royalty.

Eventually, the clay gave way to dunes of sand from which no road could be seen. I began to question the wisdom of going west. I began to question how I even knew if I was going west. Sand kept getting in my eyes and clothes, so I turned around and walked backwards. That worked well for a while, until I stumbled over the peak of a dune and rolled down the rest of the way. Now I had sand all over myself. My sword grew heavy, as did my eyelids. I had, of course, had desert survivalist training for long marches, but that assumed I had supplies and even underlings. I had no way of obtaining water without the materials for a solar still, not even an illusory oasis presented itself.

Finally, after a full day, sunrise to sunset, of wandering through the desert, I passed out from heat stroke. Once again, I had to rely on the kindness of strangers to drag my unconscious, delirious ass to safety.

I woke up when my new second-in-command opened the flap to my tent, letting all the cold air in.

"Sir," he said, shaking my shoulder. "Sir, the sun's up and there's something I think you should see."

"I'm up, I'm up!" I said.

My hunch about visibility clearing up was right. The winds and snow and fog had let up completely over night, though now all our tents and corpses were covered with snow. I could see for miles. The bad news is that one of those things I could see was the faithful army, just... milling about, a few miles away. It looked like they were getting ready to strike, and watching us.

"What should we do?" said the general.

I sighed and took another look around. I had to assume that the opposition was blocking from the way we came in, because due to the illusion I certainly couldn't piece it together... The only other walkable exit was an extremely narrow pass we would have to go through single-file.

"We have two choices. We retreat further, through that pass, or stand and fight," I said. I sighed. "Retreat. Wake the men. I won't make the mistake of attempting my laundry again this time."

"Yes, sir," he said. I went to go break down my tent.

Before we were truly ready, the faithful let out their terrifying cries and began to charge us. We picked up what we could and ran in a disorganized mess through the pass, packed shoulder-to-shoulder like sardines for lack of forming an orderly, single-file line. At that point, for all the panicked soldiers piling in the back and gridlock, we wouldn't be able to turn around if we wanted to. And we would soon want to.

My general pointed up the cliffs which formed the walls of the pass. A few soldiers of the faithful army had been crouching and now emerged, volleying arrows at our sitting-duck troops. (One almost hit me in the shoulder, but luckily my loincloth protected me and it bounced right off.) More soldiers poured in from the "exit" end of the pass. It was a trap. They knew we would retreat, because they knew Malcolm was dead and I was in charge. When they ran out of arrows they took to rocks, first the big, then the small, then they threw babies at us which was quite gruesome. Then they started throwing themselves into the fray from high above.

By then of course, with our army pinched on both ends and from above, the grey rock was painted red with the blood of thousands. The battle would last for hours, all punching and slicing. But somehow, through the chaos, we emerged victorious. Totally. Not one soldier from their entire army was left alive. (After all, we were still 20,000 elite soldiers!)

We did not leave that pass unscathed, however. I made a quick headcount. Our numbers had thinned to only 4,965, most of those badly injured. We left those who couldn't walk behind, leaving us with only 4,793. My general had passed away.

We continued our march through the mountains for several days, in complete silence. Nobody smiled. Some of the remaining soldiers, who hadn't even loincloths, caught nasty colds, which progressed into pneumonia, and they eventually collapsed, either dead or close to it, and were, too, left behind without even an acknowledgment.

After eight days of this, after we were working our way down the mountain finally, I was woken by the feel of a cold steel blade on my throat. A woman, one of my soldiers, was holding their sword to my throat.

"This is a mutiny," she said through her thick accent. "You can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

Sure, I made a mistake in leading us into that trap, and I never thought I was a GOOD leader, but I couldn't help but feel this was a bit rash. Their main complaint was with the weather, not me and not something I could even effect! What was I to do?