Rouge of the Blades

A two part story, also, tomorrow i will post the weekly chapter of "YOU NEED A HERO", thanks!

The full moon shines in the clear night sky, as the wind blows furiously, but the hundreds of armored soldiers guarded the fortress built as a ancient Japanese castle, a perfect cut stone in the middle of a artificial lake. The men were silent, and heavy armed mechs painted in red scanned the area searching for intruders. Inside the castle, an old man watched over his scared master:

-Master, the defenses are in place. Now this fortress is inexpugnable, so please rest.

-Quiet you old fart! Damn… Why I accepted making part of that foolish plan? “attack from north while we move from south, then we will take the land of Ord”… idiots, all idiots, got themselves killed miles before reaching Kardis! Now that scum, Ord, put a bounty on my head…

-Master, there is no proof of that, and even if he did so, there is no guarantee the Blades would accept such task…  Also the regular troops and the mercenary we hired are now watching the perimeter.

-Silence you stupid goat! That arkharian viper, Mariz wouldn’t waste the opportunity… As long war is declared, the assassin guilds can kill nobles without fearing prosecution… she would take the job for free, just for the taste of my blood! If I knew those morons would get slay so easily I would never enter this enterprise!!! Damn… my only chance is to negotiate a truce with Ord and suspend the war state… then the assassin guilds won’t be able to touch a nobleman like myself… You! Why I have no news of my messenger??

-Master, we dispatch several diplomatic messengers, but none return. Ord’s troops don’t let anyone leave his feud…

-That fat bastard!! He wants to see me dead? Then take my land? I have no choice than draft the commoners and try a surprise attack. Even if they all die, I can cause damage enough to force peace talks…

Suddenly an alarm sounds.

-What is this? Is an attack? Go check it! Now!! And call some guards to my room!

The old man leaves in a hurry as the feudal lord thrown books and paper weights at his heels.

Then the sound of gunfire and explosions fill the air, as a battle starts outside the castle. Too afraid to leave the room alone, he grabs a elegant energy pistol and touch a large crystal ball that lay over his table. It project a hologram with images of several security spheres around the premises. Smoke, confusion, gunfire everywhere, shadow figures moving too fast to be tracked, but none inside the castle, yet. They all are gathered at the main gate, fools!

-Guards! Ardann! Come here now! Is time to leave! Bring a squadron!

He touch a hidden button, and a wall opens, revealing a vault, full of treasures, gold, jewels, a feast to eyes, which the feudal lord try to fit inside leather bags and travel trunks.

-Where are Ardann and my guards? I will punish that old fart for making me wait like that…

-Ardann is dead, like the guards on this floor.

The voice, feminine, strong, cold but with a little drop of spite came from behind him, and he recognized it instantly.

-M… Mariz! It…it’s you!

He stuttered as his shivering hand slid discreetly to the pistol grip.

-Mariz, my dear… Please, don’t do anything rash, see all this gold? I’m sure I can outbid anything Orb offered you for my head… Let’s talk…

Quick as a snake he took his pistol and shot at the shadows, but she wasn’t there anymore.

-Don’t call me “dear”.

Her fist, wrapped on solid leather hit his jaw, as her feet kicked the pistol away, without effort.

-And above all, don’t forget: You don’t own me. Not anymore.

Her big green eyes shined like jade, filled with hatred.

- Ahh! Please Mariz! Forgive me for what I did before, I was just a boy!!! Look, now I am serious, take everything, as an apology! Just… don’t kill me!

Her cold face didn’t warned him about the kick she gave in his guts, and his cries didn’t made her stop kicking him after his fall.

-I remember. You had fifteen. I had eight, my sisters had six and four. You remember them? Alirah and Tabatha? And our mother, Neptunia? I bet you do.

He tried to crawl away like a maggot, just to be hit on his lower back. A snapping sound and a terrible pain were followed by the numbness of his legs.

-My mother wasn’t your doing… Your father killed her. I remember him, grabbing her neck, after the guards finished beating her, like she was some kind of broken toy.

-Sorry! Please let me go!!! It’s not my fault!

A soft “click” was the only indicator that she pulled the trigger of the energy pistol, hitting his hand, which burst in flames like paper in a furnace. His left hand had disappeared, leaving nothing below his elbow.

- I will never forget, me and my sisters, we watched it all. But it wasn’t over yet. He slowly stabbed her, just bellow the ribs, and waited her die in his hands, before throwing her dead body at our feet. You looked impressed.

-It was my father fault, everything! He was a sick man! I hated him too!!! Believe me when I say I tried to help!

She kick the back of his head, and he hit the floor with his teeth, that brake soaking him with blood.

-Shut up. Help us? Like when your father asked if he should “give something to the dogs to play”? Oh I remember well that you smiled like a devil and said that the dogs would love to play with… Tabatha.

She kicked him again, several times, until he was covered in wounds. He cried and beg, but she wouldn’t stop.

-She was only four, and you feed her to war dogs, laughed as she cried and screamed, while your beasts ripped her to shreds! It was you way to help us?!

-… Please!!!

-But it didn’t end. No, as your father leaved, drunk, to his prostitutes and little boys, you challenged your brother, Despain, to some night shooting practice.

-I was drunk! I didn’t want to! I swear!!!

She punched until he stop moving and laid still on the floor, crying.

-You were drunk… But still had a gun and two girls. Alirah wasn’t your type, I recall you saying she was thin as a stick, not the type of girl to take as a prize.

-Please…

He cried as she took her sword of the sheath.

-You were pretty good with a rifle, better than Despain. I remember that killing that inbreed pig was like crushing a maggot. A maggot like you. If I recall you won that night, first hit her in the leg, let her crawling in the mood and finally burst her head with a beam of energy. You let her body there, to rot in the middle of nowhere. For the next two years you told that tale to everyone, how you won a little slut in a bet against your brother. You would always say “she screamed like a hog, so annoying, that I decided to blow her head of”. Two years in your hands, chained, tortured, raped, humiliated in everyway possible way, as you would mock me over the death of my family, and how easy was to take this land from my father.

-You…You want the land back? I give it to you! Right now! Take it please!!!

-I want to see you dead, like the rest of your wretched family. I killed every single one of them, now only you are left.

-You, you WHORE! YOU CAN’T KILL ME, I AM A NOBLE MAN!!! I AM THE LORD OF THIS LAND!! YOU CAN’T KILL ME!

-Oh, true. Noblemen can only be killed during war time, accordingly to the war rules. Was difficult to be the first to get the war-time jobs I needed to kill your family. I had to sleep with many filthy men, kill some good people, pay off important politicians, and above all, lie to many, many nobles. Oh was so hard to plant false information good enough to make you and your allies attack Ord. But I could always count on your greed, isn’t true?

-You...You set me up! You started a war so you could kill me!!

-I started nothing. I am one of the Blades. We just finish things. Things and people.

Her sword cut his head of swiftly, and his two last beats gushed blood over the once precious treasure. Everything on that room disgust her. How many times she tried to kill him, to kill herself, just to fail and to be tortured even more horribly.

 If she wasn’t left behind in the battle field during one of the many failed military attacks of the Drepain… Only the gods knew what would be of her. She armed incendiary charges inside the vault and in the damned bed, pick his head and wrapped it on a thermo blanket to preserve it and leaved. On the door of the master bedroom, the Blades mark: A long dark steel dagger. That part of her life was finally over, she finished her businesses there.

Without looking back, she disappeared in the shadows, not Mariz, not anymore. Now she was finally one of them. Her name, Rouge of the Blades.

She managed to leave the castle without be seen or heard. Like a ghost, she avoided the confuse soldiers, and planted discrete energy bombs. As she entered the cold waters, s the pressed a small button on her discrete wrist-computer, and the entire castle was engulfed in a huge ball of fire. The men outside the castle panic, mercenary, knights, samurai, professional soldiers, they all started to run around like insects. Some would fall to friendly fire, others would be killed by a sniper from the Blades, one of her team mates.

One hour later they were reunited, hidden in the dense woods, close to the border between Ord’s and Drepain’s feuds. They were in five, and one of them, older and with red cybernetic eyes talked first:

-Give me your reports, first you, Stonehands.

A muscular man, bald and in his twenties smiled, he have a ordinary face, and could pass easily as a commoner.

-Yesh! Mister Wireblade! My assignment was to track down and kill a rich weapon trader called Mori Gaspent, Drepain supplier, destroy the guns and ammunitions he would supply to Drepain forces, and plant virtual evidences that he was murdered by his younger brother, Adrani. The mission was a success! I caught him with his favorite prostitute, no guards. Killed both – The man make a movement with his hands, like he was snapping a stick –Too bad about the girl. The weapons were a far cleaner job, made it explode in the river harbor, investigations will show that a malfunction on the fuel lines of the barge made the entire thing explode! Was beautiful!

-Good. Next, you Lionant.

A man with a face covered with scars bow down respectfully and spoke in a cold tone:

-Sir. My mission was to sabotage the West Gate bridge, destroying both, the bridge and a convoy with supplies and reinforcements. The bridge is no more. I used a patrol boat as a Trojan horse, filled with directional charges. When they figured something was wrong, was already too late. The bridge and anything in a two hundred meter radius was destroyed, and all reinforcements killed.

-Very good. Now you two, Crowfeather and Rouge, spoke.

Rouge had a calm look, but the young Crowfeather, a energetic girl tall as her sniper rifle, took the lead and narrated the attack to the castle:

-Was a piece of cake! Was a show, I killed 85 foot soldiers, 41 mercenaries, 9 knights and even took down four mechs, and Rouge made her part while I distracted them! Show them what you got, Rouge!

Crowfeather’s hazel eyes shinned, but Rouge was at best, bored. She unwrapped the feudal lord’s head and offered it to the leader.

-The last… The only one in the Drepain bloodline. Now all his samurai are ronin, his knights are homeless and his land vacant. This war is practically over.

-Excellent. Tonight the blades did well. In two of three jobs, our mark was left, so they will know our strength. Now we split again. Crowfeather, you will come with me to the frontline, where we will meet Ord’s generals. Stonehands, Lionant, in this self destructive letters you will find each one a new mission. Rougeblade, the feudal lord Ord asked you to deliver Drepain’s head to him, and to describe his death in details.

-Yes, will be a pleasure.

The woman get up grabbed the morbid package and left, looking annoyed. Stonehands scratched his muscular neck and spoke one last thing before they all went their separated ways.

-Ehh, she just made an excellent job, and still can’t smile… I wish I was assigned good jobs like killing feudal lords… !

SOUNDS

I hear things, strange things, things no one is supposed to hear, sounds of things that shouldn’t be.

Not words, but screams, cries, howling sounds, from nowhere, all the time, everywhere.

Night and day it never stop, at street I have to cover my ears. I can hear the sound of tires burning, breaks screaming, a loud thump, glass and bone breaking, something falling dead on the ground, a cry. But there’s nothing there, nothing.

At night I hear footsteps, thousand of dead invisible feet marching slowly through the night, dragging chains of crime and regret, howling into the void. But if I look through my window, there is nothing there.

Gun fire and someone begging for his life in the middle of the trains station, a girls cry and the sound of a body crushing on the concrete, in a school like any other.

Someone gasping and struggling for air hanging from a rope that is not there; children begging “mommy don’t hurt me” as blunt violent sounds end in soft flesh.

An old woman cries for help, she says she can’t breath, but no one hear. A man run around screaming that he is not dead, he can’t be.

A little girl weep and ask for help, she can’t find her mom, but if you look, she wasn’t there.

Day and night, always. And I know that it will never end, for I know that the voices, the sounds, they will haunt me forever.

REWARD

As we get old we realize we are fragile, and we will eventually die, no matter how good you were, or how much suffering you experienced, good or wicked, fuck it all, everyone will end dead, so all the preaching in the church, all those heroic ideals from the comic books and the constitutional rights are just a bunch of crap someone shoved down your throat, when you were to young to realize that there is no such thing as reward in the afterlife.

It was more than I could handle, after a life of good actions, religious devotion and exemplary behavior, I would simply get old and die like anyone else.

All the things I wanted to do, but I didn’t because they were “wrong” or “evil”, all the pleasures I denied myself in order to honor god’s words, every simple desire or impulse smothered under the calm obedience to the letter of law, nothing would save me from death, or even guarantee me a reward in the next life.

That’s why I decided to search for the alternative, the dark power that were forbidden to the good men, with rituals not only immoral but also illegal, filled with rape, death and gore, and that rewarded evil deeds with gold and power, yes, it would save me from death!

Took me many years and all my money, but I finally had the infamous Dark Book in my hands, the fiendish Necronomicon, the book in which are kept secrets and powers capable to destroy the sanity of the reckless.

The original is forever lost, beyond the reach of mortals, but several copies were made, but also many falsifications also were produced. To find this copy of the Dark Book is a sign of the ancient gods that my immortality is imminent!

I study it daily, night and day, and I discover spells capable to ruin body and soul of saints, and I read descriptions of demons and evil gods so realistic that they would make the innocent cry with tears of foul blood.

The rituals are complex and always have a price, but such price is expected to be paid with the blood of the innocent.

I finally find it, the spell to grant me immortality!

The price, the life of children: Ten years of youth, health and immortality to each child murdered in a dark altar in honor of The Most Evil. My first ritual grant me only then years, but in the second I manage to extend my beautiful existence in forty more years.

I live as I watch those around me die, there is no better feeling in the world than outlive the ones around me. Questions are made, but as long I have the Dark Book with me, no one can stop me.

I just finished my greatest ritual, granting me five hundred years of life and I celebrate it in a feast in my honor; those fools adore me as the god I truly am. They beg for my favors and tremble before my powers, are amusing to see how pathetic they can be.

As I finish my meal, I feel sleepy. My throat is dry. I ask for wine, and I receive a large calice of sweet wine. Now I’m drowsy… I try to speak, but my tongue is numb.

They are around me, fools!!! You will pay for this! Don’t you know that I am the immortal god?! Many of those idiots reach for pistols, knives and even axes and hammers. Pathetic, I cannot die! If I could speak, I would turn their bodies into rotten meat.

They attack me! OH GOD! The pain! It never ends! Please god, make it stop! As soon as they finish, my body repair itself in a blink of an eye. From my wounds, only the agonizing pain remains, and frustrated, my aggressors attack me again and again and again!!! IT NEVER ENDS!

My body is filled with drugs and poisons, and the paralysis and agony only become worst. They torture me, they cut me, burn me, brake my body in any possible way! It go on and on for years! I literally suffer every single moment possible; they take turns and never let me recover. My tongue is ripped of, as my nails. A red hot iron spear impales me, as my genitals are grinded every morning, before the true torture begins! The creativity and hatred are endless; they never grow tired of my agony.  

Generation After generation I am abused, tortured and humiliated. I barely kept my sanity, thanks to one single hope of salvation. My contract will kept me alive for 500 years, and no more… Then, I shall be free!

Oh, how glorious death can be! To imagine my body finally dying is pure bliss, it gives me strength to continue!

The world have changed radically, I know, even locked here, in this chamber of horrors. I carefully counted the days and hours and minutes and even the seconds, and now I am sure that the time of liberation will soon come to release me from this hellish existence.

I feel it, the life finally leaving my body with the blood that pours of the wounds that won’t heal themselves anymore. The cracked and splintered bones remain broken and my burned flesh stays dark and scorched.

Finally free I die! I close my eyes and wait for my freedom! At least!!! Freedom!!

But then I open my eyes.

And what I see make me scream like I never did before, even after five hundred years of agony!!!!!

I’m still there, in the torture room! It can’t be!

I notice the silence, and I remember how was to be alone again. I look around me, and something is not right, His symbols, the symbols of The Most Evil are every where. The room itself is different, is like a mirror image of the torture room were I spent my last days!

No, I am still dead. I should know.

As I see the door opening and hundreds of demoniac child-like demons, my sacrifices to HIM, coming down with instruments of uncanny horror I finally realize:

Indeed, there is such thing as… Reward.

HARVEST

HARVEST.

I am a soldier, a sailor, serving in a “concrete” submarine, the Vindicator. Are six of us in this vessel, and our task is to locate and destroy any enemy ship, military or not. At first, was a difficult job: You aim at a boat, and know that maybe hundreds or even thousands of civilians will probably die if you push that red button, and yet, you do it, for our homeland, for our honor, for anything right and good, or so we are told?

My first civilian target was a large cruiser, evacuating wounded soldiers and civilians from the Falklands towards the Latin Alliance territory. Trough our light enhanced periscope I saw the red cross symbol painted on its sides, visible from miles, and instead of diverting my weapons from it, I used it to aim my torpedo.

Torpedoes, at least the type we used, don’t kill by exploding in the target, they kill by exploding under it, creating a vacuum that suck everything on surface, crushing anything. If you are lucky, you will be crushed too and die quickly. If not, you will find yourself in the darkness, in the depth, crushed in debris and drowning without any chance of escape. No ship I ever hit, military or not, had survivors. Not a single soul. That’s war, that’s why we studied so hard and spent so much time and money, to assure death to others.

At the bottom of the ocean, we calmly and silently wait: Soon a large enemy convoy will pass over us, eight cargo ships, heading to Congo with supplies.  An escort of two corvettes, a frigate and three destroyers safeguard it, but they are outdated ships with poorly trained crew, a ragtag disposable crew for a second class mission on dangerous waters, or so were told to us by the military intelligence.

Our outer hull is made of soft concrete matter, which absorbs sonar waves. It also contains a chemical product that produce bubbles when electrified, that double such absorbing ability making us invisibles to them.

The first ship to get in range is a corvette, small and fragile, an easy prey, too easy. This “scout” is nothing else than a bait, to subs or mines. We ignore them completely.

The second ship is also a corvette, ad it’s using the active sonar to scan the waters. We keep silently; even our breathing is slow and calm. We let them pass too.

Then comes one of the destroyers, and on its tracks, two cargo ships, and the frigate. The frigate is our nemesis, an anti-submarine ship. It keeps silence, and uses an old silent propulsion system, that fails to evade our surveillance. Its sonar is off, on passive mode. The plan becomes clear. All ships that came before the frigate were baits to lure us in a trap. We would attack them and revel our position to the frigate, who would counter attack.

Very clever.

So they aren’t as poorly trained as we were informed, doesn’t matter anyway. We arm our supercavitanting torpedoes, seven of them. One to spare, we will save it for later.

We carefully aim them at the ships. At first, we will spare the cargo vessels. No need of such state of art weapon to kill such meek pray.

We flood the tubes and at the same time we fire a volley of four squall on the warships, we activate our silent propulsion. Hit and run.

Those torpedoes are so fast that they all are dragged into the murderous waters without even an chance of counter attack.

The two remaining destroyers fire torpedoes to our previous location, but we are already far from there. They drop their acoustic buoys to track us and confuse our sensors, but its too late.

We fire a volley with two more squalls. They die quickly, or at least I hope so. Now the cargo ships are unprotected. Our sonar indicates that they are already evacuating the ships. Smart but pointless. We can’t wait until they reach a safe distance from the cargo ships, so once we fire, they all will be dragged to death with the vessels they abandoned.

We flood the tubes for our conventional torpedoes and we activate our active sonar, two pings will suffice to kill them all, once we can fire 4 torpedoes at each time.

We fire the first volley of conventional torpedoes after the first ping. As usual, we can listen they praying and crying just before the detonation. After that, we can’t hear anything in the chaos. We prepare to the second volley, when four torpedoes appear from nowhere. Hunter-seeker torpedoes with active sonar, from where they came from?

Something close to the bottom of the ocean appear and disappear like a ghost.

An enemy submarine.

We are the prey, we always were the prey. ALL the convoy was bait. They waited for us to use our active sonar.

The torpedoes approach fast. We use our own counter measure buoys, but they are ignored.

One of my men cry, other pray. I listen to one saying the name of his young wife for the last time. None of them is older than 19, none of us is. I close my eyes, hit the button to eject the ship’s diary and silently await for what I deserved.

You reap what you sow .

And it’s time for the harvest.

The almost simultaneous explosion make the entire submarine resonate for a second, a second and nothing more. The sound, like the sound of a bell announces our doom.

So let it come. The pressure.

The pressure crushes us with the anger of a beast, and we are crushed within it. I see the man at my left be mercifully decapitated not by steel, but by a gush of water. For the first time I understand why men pray before dying, so they don’t have to see what I see next. The man who cried is crushed to something inhumane by the armored bulkheads they said would protect our lives, but then, we always knew it was another lie.

The one who called for his young wife is horrible grinded for our instruments. It takes only few seconds, but his face, his cry of agony, to me it lasted an eternity.
Is my turn to pay. I’m crushed against my chair, but not killed. I don’t feel my legs, I think I don’t have them anymore. The water is cold, everything now is dark.

I feel the pressure having its way with my ears. It hurts, but I don’t care anymore.

I feel like we are floating, but I know we are about to hit the bottom. I let my breath escape my lungs. I want it to be fast.

But it isn’t, not enough. The pain, the despair, I deserve it, but still I try to get free from my steel coffin. And I fail.

I am now dead.

I am next to the remains of our ship, the Vindicator. What it was meant to avenge? I don’t remember anymore. My mutilated body floats like jelly fish, mine and the bodies of my friends.

I realize, it’s the first time I recognize them as friends, and suddenly death wasn’t so tragic anymore, once I was surrounded by friends and not alone. Even mutilated and crushed, I know who they are, and I’m not scared of the horror and gore. We are nothing but light, pale light at the bottom of the ocean. I see the ships we sunk, some are already at the bottom, some soon will be. A flock of pale lights descent over me and my friends. Those who once were my enemies are with us now, but I don’t hate them anymore, I finally don’t have to hate them anymore. They are also mutilated. The horror, there are no words to describe the vision on hundreds so mutilated that cant be identified anymore as human.

But still, I’m not scared. They too, are calm.

We all accept what we got, that was how things were, when we lived. Now we don’t live anymore, and we reject those chains of fear and hatred.

Now we are marching, or floating? I don’t know. We are just moving, like a procession, silently by the bottom of this ocean. Many others joined us, now we are thousands. Men, women, children, doesn’t matter anymore. We just go with the flow of sea water.

We are the only light that exists. Are we at the bottom? Is the sand under us or is it mist?

Those tiny goblets of light are mere dust or are something more spiritual? I don’t know. Nobody does.

I don’t know how many days or years have passed, but now are so many of us… I can see only this light, our light. I don’t know if I’m going forward, up or down.

We are now reaching something different. Is a light golden like the sun. We are gently dragged to it, and we disappear on it.

It’s the end? Or just a gate for a new place? We don’t know.

We are so many, like star in the sky. And maybe we are, who could know?

We are changed, purified. We lost our human tracts in the way; we are brighter, and more colorful.

Soon will be my time to enter the light.

If I was still a man, I would smile, I think. I can’t be sure, once all my past was washed away in the journey.

I reach it.

I dive on it.

FIN

By LHSC

Aka

PGonTL.