"Final Castle" drabbles by Vic Raines
Eldar Prince Pt.4
Final Castle #77
James knelt, penitent. Begged for forgiveness.
On the steps to the north of the square rested the shattered eldar upon a litter of kindling, split bone and rent flesh.
Peace eluded James. He reached deeper within, looking for a prayer or suplication to steady himself.
Smoking corpses were piled about the square, exposed flesh welted and blotched.
James began counting the prayers.
Kate hobbled towards him, her skin seemed to ripple, glimmer. Her hair hung limply around her face.
She screamed when the Elated guard grabbed her, "Help me", she pleaded James.
He looked away.
Brother James attained numbing peace.
Eldar Prince Pt. 1
Final Castle #74
The crowd quietly humbled as the Eldar floated through the square carried in the tahtırevan, it's mind probed, analysed, tamed. It's large black eyes never flickered.
Baked by years of contradictory religious teachings craving impossible belief, James' mind was uniquely serene and beaten.
Amped, twitchy, divided, overclocked. Kate's mind shivved out from the blank crowd into the Eldar. It gasped, commanded the bearers to retreat.
It shreened at the Enslaved crowd, which staggered back as one, recoiling away from Kate and Brother James.
The Eldar's hold shattered and the crowd began to dissolve as Elated troops charged in. Kate shook.
Kate
Final Castle #-18
A myriad of voices. A damned energy.
In the tunnels, in a room, past the table, through the door under the vent near the lockers there's a window into a small coffin like vertical tube.
She's slumbered dreamlessly for years but now she stirs, disturbed, agitated.
The voices. They ply her and prod her and rip her in different directions. They know what's near, what approaches.
Some beg to run, some champ to fight while many pander to acquiesce, a few scheme to collaborate and others strain to dominate.
"We are Many" the demons had said as they possessed her.
Engineer 7762
Final Castle #-12087
MEM decilog interupt
Interval Drive decommission is complete. Never got it back after it f-Lined in Cluster Pti-K68 so eventually Skip said to strip it and take the Neodum parts topside for repurpose.
Milt. Locker 26 if you need the PassCaps back- I told the Sarge to expect to give em up mid month.
Just so you know, the coil IS NOT CAPPED- don't spool it like last time.
Best get the sails ready, 7070 says that the StarCore only has 125ltg fuel, we're drifting after that.
Catch you on rotation.
Watch your station, Eldar's have been inspecting.
Clearance: East 46/2
Final Castle #96
East Stadium was full, Enslaved families occupied every spare foot. Elated soldiers rigidly held unblinking station amongst them.
A sated murmur rose to where James stood in the Box, fifty feet above the playing field. James glanced beyond the stadium walls where a light mist drifted through the sunny, empty city streets of Placa 46 Lower.
James heard the discharge crackling, saw the tear escape Praetus' eye and rationalised the mist almost instantaneously.
The air within the stadium below him was suddenly full of overlapping Grypyn wings. Their screech crescendoed.
The cloud of people dust lazily smoked upwards, highlighting sunbeams.
Enslaved Newspapers are Mostly Pictures
Final Castle #40
The Scholar Tysk hulked over his desk in the editorial suite of the city newsroom. He rumaged clumsily
"Yul no getat Raven Point esy Brother. Elayt'd haf dobl shift sinz the ferry dwnd, yuken, wit yu init."
Tysk handed him a small worn metal rectangle.
"Rite, bess cando. Iz gud az kycrd fur in tunnuls."
James took Tysk's strong hands in his own and kissed them.
"Tysk, I thank the gods and they may repay you for I cannot"
Tysk's smile creased deep familiar lines in his huge craggy face, "nun'f'it. Owt wud had pull yu from that mes, ken"
"Rite offal cras, jus you ress"
Final Castle #37
Fluttering eyelids, head rolling loose on shoulders. Feet making furrows away from a wretched toothed fuselage. Moving backwards.
Blink
The flight harness had slipped under his arms. He feebly tried to loosen it. Not harness. Hands. Warm breath.
Blink
A circle of eyes, children. The little one scampered away and the others repelled away from him. "Shu..." He breathed
Blink
Worried, worn face. Strong hands. Enslaved tattoos.
"Brother? Dun be friten'd. W'av yu, yur saf. Rite offal cras, jus you ress"
Blink
Faculty. He was lying on a table on his back. A kitchen table. A ragged child studied him.
The Calm
Final Castle #13
James served them a simple meal then ate his own, simpler meal on his knees outside the kitchen door.
He heard a cross section of the soldiers gossip. As always on the same topic.
"Jer's grandfather says he remembers seeing docks for these Cityships, so big you couldn't see from one side to the other"
"not even sure if it has engines, or just drifts"
"steered from the Cruiser"
"called it 'Peytra' or something"
Not for the first time, James idly wondered if the Cityship was just an illusion, a riddle to keep the people's minds off the real problems.
Opiate of the Kill
Final Castle #2
It's death brought familiar clarity. Brother James suffered an almost narcotic shock. A crystal sharp awareness yawed him.
The sloping green forests leading away from the mountains where the monastery nestled, tumbling down to the sea and the sprawling, thrumming city by the sea. Across the narrows James gawped at the lights of the Industry zone, still in darkness.
The bauble dome of the Cityship glistened above them all, unknowing black space beyond it.
Hot, trained tears grounded him. He dropped next to the dead wolf and choked, sobbed, bargained, begged it to live again, snarling lethal jaws and all.
At the Moon Lake
Final Castle #197
Kate's words came back to him, "Dear James, but there are no people anymore. There are Cultists, Servants, the Elated, the Enslaved. But there are no people. He'll change that. His right is true. The Ancient One. The Eldar's finest are nothing to him."
He was safe, he hoped, in the treeline as the Elated Brethren led out the offering.
Brother James stopped breathing when he heard the lapping waves at the shore turn to an agitated sloshing then a crashing roar that almost drowned the screams.
He couldn't look. He knew what would happen if he looked.
Eyes closed.
A Cut...
Final Castle #19
They were too slow to do anything but watch.
In less than a second loose, wild electricity became the hated shrieking hawklike silhouette then disappeared again into nothing.
It was the Grypyn XVII, an Elated Shock Fighter.
James understood something of the mechanism. The matter displaced by the fighter's appearance flooded a targetted area on the atomic level then violently ruptured it as the Grypyn dematerialised again. Organic material was turned to dust, inorganic to smoking brittle.
James watched as the dust that had been Peters settled around the rubble that had been two walls.
It must have been Jackson.
...Of a Different Cloth
Final Castle #20
James was a slim reed of a man with a bohemian shock of dark hair punctuated with fine braids above a crooked nose. He carried with him a sense of peace. Of the willfully passive.
Brother James studied the rubble within the monastery courtyard. The damage couldn't be undone and could not be rectified. They would have to leave behind this ill sanctuary.
He calculated silently. The metal intestines of this Cityship? The mountains?
Kate drifted silently behind him, touched his shoulder. "Brother, we need to leave. NOW"
Crackling static above the chapel announced the Grypyn XVII returning. To finish.
