RE: MORITURI TE SALUTANT!! [S!4]
06-24-2016, 04:24 AM
The contestants slipped into the Haruspex’s observatory amidst the fading echoes of applause. The familiar sensation of paralyzed limbs overtook them as the crystal walls chimed with their arrival, little icicles of glass tinkling against each other from the webbed arches. They stood clustered in a tight group, close enough to touch shoulders.
The Haruspex’s attention was not on them, though. As they had appeared, so had two lithe figures in faded court attire, shimmering into existence on the marble floor.
“Mademoiselle,” the first of them giggled, “I regret that we have business with you.”
They were tall and impossibly thin. The foremost seemed female, swanlike and airy, her angles sharp. Beside her stood a nondescript figure in a dark grey suit, clearly her subordinate. The air around them seemed bleached by their presence, as if all the color in the room had been drained.
“Vae Victus,” the female said, her face a smiling mask with closed eyes. She wore a gown of aging lace and worn silk that fell across her body like a mourning shroud. Her neck was long and strung with diamonds, her exquisitely coiffured hair tumbling across her shoulders in soft grey curls. She gestured to her companion demurely. “My chaperone, Vox Populi.”
“I have no business with you,” the Haruspex snapped. The glassy fibers rising from her arms crackled and sparked. “I am terribly busy-“
“Oh, oh, I understand, my dear, of course,” Vae Victus laughed. Her voice was a like a songbird’s, high and chirping. It crawled mockingly into the Haruspex’s head, filling the spaces in between her thoughts. “But, with deepest apologies, our Court has taken issue with you. You have detained one of our senior members for several months now. We simply cannot bear this insult any longer.”
The Courtier shifted, casually, and suddenly the Haruspex saw that there was a spear in her hand: long, glittering silver, more like a needle than a weapon, with a red tassel bouncing merrily under its blade. Something about the weapon’s terrible brightness made the Haruspex’s breath catch in her throat.
“What is that?” the Haruspex snapped, louder than she meant to. She flinched as the hummingbird fluttered to her shoulder.
“Such a thing can have no name by its nature,” the bird said. “It is an abomination.”
“My dear Vox Nihili,” Vae Victus sighed. She ran her fingers through the spear’s dancing tassel. “You will not acknowledge your finest creation? Did all your children die for nothing?”
“Stephan,” the Haruspex hissed. “Make your friends leave.”
“They are not my friends, mademoiselle.”
“We are your family, Vox,” Vae Victus said. Gently she lowered the spear until its tip pointed at the Haruspex’s breast. Its blade gleamed hungrily. “You have been away from us too long.”
The Haruspex snatched the hummingbird from her shoulder furiously, clutching it in her fist. She thrust its little body out like a shield. “You come into my domain and demand my prize from me?”
Vae Victus gave a crystalline laugh and threw the spear.
It didn’t fly so much as it lunged. There was a terrible gleam and it was in the air of its own accord, its tassel a streak of brilliant red. The hummingbird darted, wings blurring, and the spear shot through where he had been only a moment earlier with a piercing whistle. The Haruspex’s hair billowed about her face.
She was stunned for a moment, and then screamed. “You!” she howled, thrusting her finger at the smiling Courtier. The hummingbird fluttered above her head. “You dare!”
“Your children miss you, Vox,” Vae Victus giggled. “Look how they thirst for you.”
The Haruspex turned, eyes wide with fury. Her captives, frozen, had fallen in the spear’s path.
Hector did not feel any pain. He felt very little at all, in fact. The spear had run him through, and with it shattered the vase that had been meekly hiding behind him. The blade was cold, colder than the darkness between stars and hungry, so terribly, mindlessly hungry where it had pierced him just under his collarbone. Numbness spread through him like searching fingers, drawing him in and- out? He wasn’t dying, he realized. No blood spilled from his chest to taint the shining silver. The spear thrummed. Nothing was happening to him. Nothing was spreading through his body. Nothing was dissolving him, unmaking him, painfully reaving the air with its sudden wrongness, its utter lack of anything. He was nothing. He was nothing.
He was
“The godkiller spear,” Vox said as the weapon tipped forward. It laid itself smugly upon the ground where something had once been. “That is its vulgar description, mademoiselle. It was my gift to our Empress.”
Vae Victus laughed again. “You see what you meddle in, little girl?” The spear was in her hand again, tassel dancing merrily. The Haruspex hadn’t seen it return.
The hummingbird paused in the air a moment, then flitted to the Courtier’s outstretched hand. He settled upon her middle finger and Vae Victus’ smile seemed to grow more sincere. “I regret I must leave you now, mademoiselle,” he said to the stunned Haruspex, his diamond eyes on the smiling Courtier. “There are many things I must correct. I will return to you when I can, but for now-”
A soft noise like an exhaled breath filled the rotunda, and then all three of the Courtiers were gone.
“What?” screamed the Haruspex. “What?”
Her rotunda was silent. She pivoted, staring at her captives. To a man their eyes were on the now conspicuously empty space among them.
“Beassssts,” she hissed. “Beasts! Beasts, all of you! Go! GO!”
She thrust her arm at them and the captives felt themselves being flung once more into a void, dark and yawning, before arriving somewhere else. Their last glimpse was of the Haruspex sinking into her throne, weeping bitterly.