I offered the astounding Mookyvet a gift story, and she requested a tale about her character Aimelle. Aimelle is a Caithari, a race of humanoid mantis-like insectoids ruled by a strict matriarchy and capable of great magical feats. I ran a little wild with such a wide-open setting. Mook drew up this picture of Aimelle and the rebel Kilker to accompany the second part of her story; please fav the original here.

Aimelle and the Caithari are, of course, Mookyvet's character and concept.

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Continued from part one

Aimelle's Tale, Part 2

Day 1

Great things…that took on an ironic tinge as the Augur's words echoed through Aimelle's mind as she regained consciousness. All was still dark; she could feel the sack over her head, having rubbed a few raw spots on her chitinous exoskeleton. How long had she been out…hours? Days? And where could the rebels have taken her? She sobbed quietly as she recalled news reports of the vile Matxino rebels torturing captured guardsmen for information before devouring them, since the Queen's troops had so efficiently cut them off from resupply.

"He's not going to make it unless we do something," a gruff male voice said. "The others are deteriorating, and we've exhaused the medications that Xue brought last time. We need to try it."

"Out of the question," snapped another, more authoritative male voice. "It's bad enough that you've all but brought the Erresuma Guard and the Ikerlari inquisitors down upon us by kidnapping a Vestal, Kilker! To release one in the confines of our space is to add madness to madness!"

"What was I to do? We were committed to an attack on the Augur's compound…you committed us!" the first voice--Kilker, was it?--said angrily. "And we couldn't make it past the front gate, not with the casualties we sustained in the farm raid yesterday…a raid which you also committed us to!"

Trying desperately not to stir or even change the measured pace of her breathing lest the rebels learn she was awake, and then presumably torture and devour her, Aimelle was nevertheless screaming on the inside.

"The name Beldar on those orders means I'm well aware that the responsibility for the attacks' success or failure rests with me," the other voice, Beldar apparently, snapped. "That's the doctrine of command responsibility we follow. But what do you think gave you the right to circumvent my standing orders and capture a priestess?"

Aimelle tried to focus on the voices, tried to picture them as qyth-rats ripe for suggestion by a little chaos magick. Surely the rebels were weak-minded and susceptible to the influence of one with the infallible god-Queen on her side?

The Augur had, after all, expected great things from her.

"Our men were wounded and I made a decision to acquire something that could help them," said Kilker. "Berate me if you must, punish me if you must, but at least see that I was acting in the best interests of our men!"

A sigh. "I understand that, Kilker. And it's commendable. But you didn't think the decision through; now we're saddled with a prisoner in a facility not equipped to keep any, and a Vestal at that. The Erresuma Guard or the Ikerlari will come looking for her. There are consequences for us, consequences for her…your compassion may wind up costing all of our men their lives, don't you see?"

Concentration came easier as Aimelle's consciousness ebbed back. She was focused on implanting an irresistible sensation, an irresistible compulsion, that no Caithari could possibly resist.

"I understand, and I'm sorry," Kilker said. "But it's happened, and there will be time to sort out blame later. For now we must…we must…"

His speech trailed off and there was a sudden silence.

"The Queen wishes us to release the prisoner as escort her to the Holy District," Beldar said.

"Yes, it is the Queen's will that it be so," echoed Kilker.

There was a pause; Aimelle's heart pounded with joy. Surely they'd pull the bag off her head now, obey the chaos she'd implanted into their minds…

Instead, both voices burst into laughter.

"Oh, I bet she would, wouldn't she?" Kilker chortled. "That withered old bitch of a figurehead would want her Vestal back, wouldn't she? How long to you think the priestess has been conscious?"

"A little while, at least," Beldar laughed. "Oh, that's rich. To think that a command from the Queen meant anything to us!"

The bottom dropped out of Aimelle's stomach, and she felt sick.

"Get a psychic nullifier, will you?" Beldar said. "Tune it to 100 and 300 hertz…that ought to block any other priestly magicks she tries to sling our way."

The sack was roughly swept off Aimelle's face; the sudden transition to bright light overwhelmed her compound eyes for a moment, and while she was blinded she felt something shoved over her head like a circlet and secured under her chin.

She was in a concrete room lit by harsh lights from overhead--maybe one of the old warrens from the very earliest days of the city, when the population had lived underground as their feral ancestors had. Instinctively, Aimelle tugged at the headgear but it was secured snugly and locked by some mechanism she'd never felt before. To her further dismay, her instinctive chaomancy and aeromancy incantations--not that the latter would have done much good in an enclosed space--were completely ineffective. Whatever they'd put on her had left only ordomancy available to her.

"See our guest to her quarters while Kilker and I work out our plans," Beldar said, still chuckling.

Day 2

A key jangled in the lock of Aimelle's cell and a Matxino guard appeared. Like the others, he had smeared ash across his brood mark and wore a black armband, both symbols of their blasphemous rejection of the god-Queen's authority.

"You up, princess?" the guard--Zorri, he'd called himself--said. He had a relaxed stance but the assault rifle braced in his second pair of clawed arms had its safety off. "It's time to go."

Aimelle wearily rose from her bed. Her cell was clean and comfortable, furnished with a worn bed and couch that looked like they had been retrieved from the discard pile at one of the Holy District's finest furniture stores, but her fear and shame--to say nothing of the psychic nullifier on her head--had kept sleep at bay. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see when we get there," Zorri said. "Just don't try to plant the idea that the Queen is telling me to do anything, okay?" He laughed. "I might just speak my mind, and for a priestess to hear what I have to say about your precious phony Queen…you'd pop a gasket, and that pretty head of yours would blow like a blister."

Still chuckling, Zorri bound Aimelle's hands and led her through the concrete warren of the rebel Matxino base. Aimelle had been terrified that her capture would mean torture and privation. In a way, being constantly laughed at was worse. No one would dare laugh at a Vestal unless they knew her very, very well in the ordered and Queen-reverent real world above.

She was led into what had to be a medical ward; wounded Caithari lay on stretchers, visibly burnt or bandaged, and a forest of hemolymph bags for transfusions sprouted on metal poled from the floor. Most of the injuries could have been healed in moments by a priestess well-versed in Ordomancy at a royal hospital, but one of the consequences of turning away from the god-Queen and her priestesses was a reliance on the more primitive and invasive physical medicine the humans were forced to practice.

Kilker, the second-in-command of the rebels, was there to meet her. Now that she wasn't blinded, Aimelle could see that he'd been scarred by battle--one of his vestigial wings was in tatters, and one of his antennae had been all but sheared off. "Welcome, your worship," he said with a sarcastic twinge. "These are wounded freedom fighters who put their lives on the line in service of the Matxino revolution. They shed hemolymph that power might be returned to the people."

"Power in the hands of the people? T-that's absurd," Aimelle said quietly. "The god-Queen recieves her power from the gods, who know and see all. The people could o-only subvert their designs."

"Ha! Spoken like a true Vestal priestess," Kilker chortled. "But surely you know that Liturgy of the Queen 127:42, which reads in part 'and the sufferers shall see their pains lifted, no matter their brood, sex, or creed?'"

Aimelle was as surprised to hear a Matxino quoting the Liturgy as she would have to see a qyth-rat dancing a tarantella. "You…you know the Liturgy?" she all-but-whispered. Royal TV and the newspapers claimed that the Matxino were Liturgy-ignorant illiterates, after all.

"Of course," said Kilker. "I trained as a rector before I was called to serve the cause of the Matxino and freedom. After all, the minor post of rector is all that a male like me can hope for in the matriarchy."

"Males are only suitable for caring for broods and simple tasks like guarding and inquisitio," Aimelle said. "Liturgy of the Queen 27:18."

"Ah, but that surah of the Liturgy only says 'and she shall have her place and he shall have his, under the Queen as under the sun and sky," countered Kilker. "It's a matter of interpretation that brings it to where you priestesses would see it go."

Aimelle could only blink in surprise. The Liturgy, she had been taught since her first molt, was infallible and the Queen's official interpretation was correct and immutable.

"I could debate theology with you all day, Vestal, but these freedom fighters need the tender ministrations of a priestess," Kilker continued. "Heal them with your ordomancy."

Even if her ordomancy was strong enough--and Aimelle wasn't sure of that--she couldn't even attempt it if those she healed might blasphemously bear arms against the Queen. "I…I can't," she said. "I'm not strong enough in ordomancy, and…it is forbidden."

"Lots of things are forbidden, your worship," Kilker said, his face growing hard. "And I know that even priestesses who train in the other magicks have basic ordomancy skills. Even your most basic healing cantrip could save lives."

"I won't do it," Aimelle squeaked. "I can't."

Kilker sighed. "All right, we'll do this the hard way." He drew a suppressed pistol from a leather holster slung low across his hips and aimed it at Aimelle. "Do what you can for the Matxino closes to you, or I will put a bullet between your antennae."

The Vestal's antennae trembled violently, as did her vestigial wings, but the Vestals were trained to accept death over disobediance. "N-no."

"The harder way, then." Kilker nodded to Zorri, who left and returned a moment later, escorting an Erresuma guardsman who was bound, hooded, and visibly bruised.

"Wh…what…?" Aimelle stammered.

Kilker aimed the gun at the Erresuma. "Your protector, the strength of the Queen, dies unless you minister to the Matxino," he said cooly.

"But…I…I…"

"Very well then." The suppressed pistol barked, and a spray of sticky hemolymph sprayed out as the Erresuma guardsman crumpled to the ground.

Aimelle shrieked, scarcely able to believe what she'd just seen, but her cries made no impression. Zorri returned a moment later with another guardsman, and dragged away what was left of the first. Kilker aimed his gun at the new guardsman.

"We have quite a few hostages," he said nonchalantly. "Would you like to be responsible for their deaths in addition to the Matxino who will die without your ministrations?"

When there was no reply from the still-sobbing Aimelle, the rebel second-in-command began to slowly pull back the trigger for a double-action shot. It was three quarters of the way there when the Vestal held up her hands.

"All right," she said. "All right, I'll see what I can do."

"Good," Kilker said. "Nurse, see if you can help her."

Day 35

"I don't think those restraints are necessary, Zorri."

"Yes, sir." the Matxino guard unbound Aimelle's hands and left her standing nervously before Beldar in his office. The rebel leader didn't look up, concentrating instead on paperwork spread across his desk--the Erresuma guards or the Ikerlari inquisitors would have given their left mandibles for that kind of intelligence on the rebels.

"Kilker tells me that you have been heloing our nurses out quite a bit with your ordomancy," Beldar said after a while, still not looking up. "Stabilizing patients and healing minor wounds."

"I was threatened," Aimelle said. "With the death of guardsmen loyal to the queen."

"Is that so." Beldar continued to write. "The nurse tells me that despite that, and despite your basic level of ordomancy training, you've been putting your all into the work of saving lives."

"Vestals of the Queen stand by their given word," Aimelle said, straightening. "And I hope that by my example your rebels might be moved back into the loving embrace of the Queen."

"I'm sure." The rebel leader set his pen down and looked up. A pair of reading goggles were strapped to his face, giving him a strangely informal look for such an evil and blasphemous male. "Do you see that shelf behind my desk?"

Aimelle looked at it; there was a strange vial of clear liquid, and a ceremonial Erresuma guardsman's pike in a stand. "The bottle?"

"No, no," Beldar laughed. "That bottle is a gift from the human traders on Decima Island. In case of emergencies."

He stood up from his chair and hefted the Erresuma pike. "This," he said, swinging it through the air a few times, activating the hidden trigger which fired rifle rounds from the pike's hidden magazine (which only clicked dryly). "I used this for almost ten years in the service of Queen and country," he said. "Even though the system was rotten and the Queen was no goddess to be worshipped, I did my best to be an honorable Erresuma, much as it pains me that I was ever a servant of such a repressive matriarchy that sees males only as so much meat for slaughter."

The captive Vestal priestess said nothing; she was quietly wondering what sort of terrible circumstance could lead a loyal, elite Erresuma guard to abandon his god-Queen for blasphemy.

"If I, a Matxino, can see honor in serving the Queen under those circumstances," Beldar contined, "surely you can see honor in serving the Matxino as a healer, even if you do not agree with our convictions and are held against your will."

"Let me go, then," Aimelle cried. "Let me return to my temple and my Queen."

"I…cannot," Beldar said. He set his staff back down. "It was not my decision to abduct you, but you know too much of our base and our ways, and you are too valuable as a healer. For that I am sorry."

"You wouldn't face the same treatment if those loyal to the Queen had captured you."

"You're right. I'd be dead already," Beldar said grimly. "Before he was hollowed out on the breaking wheel, before his carapace was broken up and displayed all over the Royal City, Matxin said that the strength of one's convictions rests wholly on the good they do. Not their desire for good, not their potential for good, but their good. You are doing good for us, Aimelle."

"Are you following your own leader, with your bombings and kidnappings and killings?" Aimelle said after a moment.

"Not a day goes by when I don't ask myself that question and wrestle with it. But let me ask you this: are those loyal to the Queen doing any better?"

"Of course." The response was automatic.

There was a knock on the door. "We'll have to talk more later," Beldar sighed. "Zorri!"

The guard opened the door and came in to bind the Vestal's four wrists. Behind him was…a horribly ugly creature, one convergent evolution had given a shape that was a hollow mockery of the Caithari's perfection.

A human.

"Xue Zheng, welcome!" Beldar said as Aimelle was led away. "We've the payment you requested. Does Brankovic have the weapons she promised?"

"They are on Decima as we speak," said the human, its single pair of arms folded. "Small shipments, the largest we dare, begin as soon as your payment clears."

The door swung shut heavily, cutting the rest of the conversation off.

Day 84

"It's an order from the highest level," Zorri had said, undoing Aimelle's manacles for the last time. "You're to be given free run of the compound. You'll set off an alarm if you try to leave to try to remove your psychic nullifier, but anyone who saved Markatu's life after the raid on Caracol has my confidence, and that of Beldar, and that of Kilker."

She had used the freedom as best she could, often reporting to the medical area to help the wounded and try to bring them back to the light of the Queen, but also just wandering. There were no crowds of Matxino spitting on the Queen's icons, no torture chambers, and perhaps a half-dozen sullen hostages in the holding cells--one of the few places she continued to be more or less barred from.

Instead, Aimelle saw the rebels eating, training, playing cards or donating hemolymph for the wounded. Their brood marks indicated all sorts of origins, from sewer cleaner to Senator, though all were defaced by the ash spread int heir weekly recommitment ceremony, the only ritual they had that was comparable to anything in an outside temple. There was, to Aimelle's surprise, a small shrine to the gods that some rebels often prayed or meditated at.

The gods were noted in the Queen's Liturgy, but only in so much as they were the source of her power and she alone was fit to communicate with them. The old days, when every house had a shrine and the Caithari had sought to speak with their gods directly, had given way over a thousand years ago during the wars that unified the Caithari under a single Queen and destroyed the false Queens that had once fractured their society.

But some of the rebels seemed to believe in the source of the Queen's power, even if they no longer believed in her.

Aimelle also occasionally ran into Xue Zheng, the rebels' human contact. At any given time there were three or four humans in the rebel compound, trading valuable Caithari technology, medicines, and gold that they had stolen for weapons, medical supplies, and other essentials.

"There are rumors throughout the Royal City that the humans are behind the Matxino rebels," she said after catching up with Xue one day. "It would seem that your presence here is proof of whose side your people are really on."

"We are not one people, priestess, but many," Xue said coldly, his Cathari language stilted, accented, and formal. "Much like the Caithari and their broods, or so I am told."

"What?"

"Brankovic is as close to a leader as the trading outpost--really nothing more than a group of people from different corporations--on Decima has. She is a believer in freedom and democracy and the other human ideas some like the Matxino seek to implement on your backward culture. I myself am a believer in money. You pay us for our aid, give us items that your xenophobic government refuses to export."

Aimelle was stunned to hear such talk--the rumors said nothing of such mercenary detachment. "But surely you are risking something by being here," she said. "With the penalty of death for leaving Decima."

"That penalty is a paper tiger," Xue scoffed. "No human has ever been executed for breaking it, and plenty have found their way off of the island. It would cause a diplomatic incident, even war, which your people are anxious to avoid."

"I've never heard of any humans being captured in the Royal City," Aimelle said indignantly. "And why would we fear war with the humans? We have beaten you twice already."

"Your media suppresses such incidents, and the proof that appears on your computer networks is dismissed as conspiracy theory and forgery. And while it is true that the Caithari have defeated us in the past, that was many years ago. The balance of power has begun to shift, and the Caithari government and economy are stagnant. There is an old human maxim, laid down by one of my ancestors, that states 'do not go into battle until the war has already been won.' The outcome of any such war would be in grave doubt. Now, if you will excuse me."

Aimelle let the human pass. Before he vanished into the warren of sewers that served as rebel transport, she cried one last question to Xue. "What's in the vial behind Beldar's desk?"

"An escape, should he choose to use it," Xue cried over his shoulder. "One which, to you Caithari, would be a fate worse than death."

Day 168

"I can't," Zorri said. "I just can't."

"Zorri, I saved your life after you were injured in the battle over the Labezomorro farms last month," Aimelle said. "If it weren't for my ordomancy stabilizing you, you never would have gotten that hemolymph transplant."

The Matxino rebel guard looked at the stump of his upper left arm, blown off in combat and only just starting to regrow. "But the psychic nullifier is Beldar's order," he said. "It's a precondition of you being allowed to roam the base, and the only thing keeping you from leaving."

"After all the lives I've saved here, do you really think I intend to go?" Aimelle said.

Zorri seemed to mull the issue over for a moment. He reached out and popped open the hidden catch to disable the psychic nullifier, which fell to the floor with a clatter. "There."

Aimelle reached out with her chaomancy, testing it with a single command to Zorri: speak your mind aloud.

"It's amazing what an actor in a guard uniform, blanks, and a hemolymph squib can do to ensure compliance," Zorri blurted out. His eyes widened in horror a second later after he realized what he'd just said.

Eyes flashing, Aimelle whispered another word with her chaomancy: paranoia.

"Oh, gods…OH, GODS! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!" Zorri screamed, dancing about and trying to brush imaginary somethings off of him. "The qyth-rats…THE QYTH-RATS! NOOOOO!"

Aimelle left him to his temporary insanity. She'd learned her lesson all right: no chaomancy about the Queen for these rebels.

The path to the sewers and freedom took her through a weapons bay crowded with rebel soldiers; focusing, Aimelle cloaked herself in hallucinatory garb.

"Good to see you, Xue," the Matxino nodded as she passed, seeing not Vestal Txi'Aimelle but rather the human mercenary arms dealer sauntering through their ranks. None made any effort to stop her; Aimelle walked straight past every last guard and into the sewers.

There, she unfurled a map pieced together from hundreds of overheard conversations, one which--she hoped--would take her back to the Holy District, the Augur's Temple, and her own apartment.

Sloshing through the sewage, Aimelle cursed herself for falling for such an obvious trick. Of course Kilker's executation had been a charade! Of course he wouldn't kill a valuable hostage! She had been of two minds about the escape even as she planned it, desperate to return to the only home she'd ever known, but deeply sorry about the rebel wounded she would leave behind, helpless save for the magick-less and crude human medicines they could buy.

Day 169

Seven hours and fifteen wrong turns later, Aimelle stumbled out of a drainage pipe within sight of the Vestal Apartments. A deep breath to calm her focus, a little aeromancy to blow away the stench, and the prodigal Vestal returned. There was a back way she and Harra used to use for sneaking away from the compound once upon a time; Aimelle scaled the drainpipe and ducked through the linen closet that the rout entailed, reveling in her freedom.

The key still fit her old lock, but she was shocked to find Harra seated at the desk when it swung open.

"A…Aimelle? Is that you?" Her old assistant, now with the brood-mark of a priestess, gasped. "I…I heard that you'd been killed or worse, taken by the Matxino."

Stumbling through the door, leaving it open, Aimelle collapsed on the bed. "You…you've no idea what I've been through," she said, weeping softly.

"Let me call someone up here," Harra said evenly, pressing the requisite button on the room's intercom.

"It's good to see they gave my room to someone I know," Aimelle said weakly, without rising. "How long since you became a vestal, Harra?"

Her friend stayed at her chair near the desk, hands carefully folded in her lap. "One month," she said flatly. "I was able to get an accelerated course after your…absence."

"Do you think…it's so crazy to think of this after all that's happened, but now that I'm safe it's all my mind will process. Do you think they'll let me have my old room back, if it's all right with you."

"I should think that once we've gone through the proper channels…you can have whatever your heart desires," Harra said. Again, Aimelle noticed a curious flatness in her former assistant's tone.

"Is…is everything all right, Harra?"

"It is now. Come in, please."

An Erresuma guardsman was at the door, entering at Harra's signal. "By your command, Vestal Txi'Harra," he said. With a start, Aimelle realized that he was carrying not the ceremonial staff of the guards in the Vestal compound but the military-grade assault rifle of an active-duty soldier.

"I've escaped from the Matxino, and I've come back to do the Queen's work," Aimelle said. "Please, take me to see the Augur Txi'Meleta."

The Erresuma held up a photograph, comparing the Aimelle captured within it to the one before him. "It's her," he sighed in a weary voice. "It's a General Directive 17 issue, Vestal Txi'Harra," he said. "If you'd like to-"

"No," Harra said. "I received a special briefing during my investiture. The Augur thought…well, she was right. I choose to stay."

"Very well." The guardsman said.

Then, with horrifying speed, he pointed the muzzle of his assault weapon at the center of Aimelle's chest.

"What are you doing?" she yelled, swatting the gun aside. Ignoring her protests, the guardsman roughly shoved her back and lined up the weapon for another shot. There was no time to react, no time to think, no time for chaomancy to place an idea or ordomancy to gird her for the bullet's impact.

Luckily, some magicks could work on instinct.

The door swung wildly on its hinges as a great gout of wind swept through the room, drawn in by the low pressure Aimelle had created with be basest instincts. Normally aeromancy was ineffective inside, but the open door and the threat to her life were all that the prodigal Vestal needed. Papers and debris twisted around the guardsman, and he swatted at them lest they foul his aim.

That was the least of his worries. The airflow built up to hurricane force, and the guardsman was hurled bodily out the window, shrieking as he plummeted seven stories to the ground. The impact wasn't pretty; he left a smear of hemolymph down the concrete embankment that led to the sewer drain.

"What was that?" Aimelle cried, advancing on Harra. The wind had died down, but the overcast skies had quickly turned to a hard and driving rain which lashed the ragged hole in the apartment window. "Why did my own guardsman try to kill me?"

"I don't speak to traitors," Harra snarled with a ferocity that stunned her friend. "When you turned your back on the Queen, you turned your back on me!"

Aimelle advanced on Harra, seizing her by the edge of her carapace plates. "I never forsook the Queen! I stayed loyal to her through that whole terrible ordeal underground!"

"Lies!" Harra spat. "A true Vestal would have killed herself to avoid capture. A true Vestal would have tossed the foul Matxino about like ragdolls! Not capture. Never capture! Death first!"

"What?" Aimelle cried. "I can't serve the Queen if I'm dead!"

"That's is service, you traitor! The final service, and it's expected of all Vestals whether the training makes it explicit or not! General Directive 17 is the only recompense for a traitorous Vestal who fails to serve!"

"What is General Directive 17?" Aimelle cried, the wind beginning to pick up around her once more.

Harra was silent.

"What is General Directive 17?" Aimelle picked Harra up by her carapace and dangled her over the edge.

"Any priestess who allows herself to be captured by an enemy of the state is suspect and a traitor!" Harra said as the wind and rain lashed her face and matted her short-cropped setae. "General Directive 17 requires any such traitorous priestess to be executed on sight!"

The words were like sledgehammer blows to the head; Aimelle reeled as if from a punishing strike. "You mean all the good I tried to do, all the wounded rebels I tried to turn back toward the Queen, all the effort I've put into escaping…it means nothing?"

"Doing good is not the Queen's directive, nor the Augur's!" said Harra. "Obedience is their directive! We trust in the Queen that what we do will lead to future good."

There were no words for what Aimelle felt in the ruins of her room; not even the tempest of a rainstorm she had summoned through brute instinct could convey the rending and roiling she felt at the deepest level of her soul at the news.

"And now, I will show you what that obedience and devotion looks like, traitor," Harra said. "I have forgotten my place and spoken with you more than the bare few words required to summon the guards. That is treason in and of itself."

"N-no! Harra, listen to me! I don't care what you did! There are places you can go…we could go together!"

Harra laughed a hollow laugh. "This is how a true Vestal of the god-Queen serves." Suddenly, forcefully, she writhed in Aimelle's arms and broke her grip. The prodigal Vestal on the ledge heard a few sung verses of the Queen's liturgy echo up from below before they were ended by a sickening smack.

Aimelle sat on the edge of her ruined apartment, weeping, not caring who found her or what happened. Trying to process what had just happened was like trying to press shards of glass into her forehead. Loyalty to the Queen, the desire to be a priestess…that was all she had known since her first molt, since before her first molt. From the time she'd been taken in as a child…years, decades of service, to the point of betraying the trust the Matxino had put in her…and for what? For the god-Queen and her servants to assume she was a traitor, good for nothing but execution?

"It hurts, doesn't it?"

Beldar was standing in the door, dressed in Erresuma armor. His was an older model, one which would pass casual inspection but wouldn't stand up to close scrutiny.

"My unit was cut off by the rebels before Matxin was captured and sent to the breaking wheel," he said quietly, walking through the room toward Aimelle's sob-wracked form. "We were under the command of a priestess with hopes of personal advancement. She thought that her road to becoming a Vestal was to take her personal force of guardsmen and send them against the rebels in the Eltxo Forest."

"Wh…what happened?" Aimelle whispered, her voice little more than a hiss.

"We were city guardsmen up against rebels in terrain they'd known for a dozen moltings. They outnumbered us, surrounded us, cut us to ribbons. The priestess who ordered the assault claimed we had gone in without orders. There were no reinforcements, only a radio order to fight to the last male. One hundred of us went in. Seven came out. I led them back to our lines, and we were…arrested. The Augur said over the radio that we must have been turned by the rebels, that we must have been sent back as agents to spy and sabotage. When my second refuted the charges, they slit his throat. We were expected to lie down, let ourselves be disarmed, and die for a priestess's hubris, while she looked on laughing."

"There was a priestess on the Wall of the Fallen in the Queen's Temple with the Eltxo Forest by her name," Aimelle said softly. "I remember it, one of the few that didn't die in a city. You killed her, didn't you?"

"I drove this very weapon through her left eye," Beldar said, "and led what remained of my men to the rebels."

"So you knew." Aimelle's tone was bitter. "You knew what would happen if I returned, and you let me go anyway."

"The psychic nullifier sent a signal to my desk when it was removed. I thought of stopping you, but…we all choose our own destiny, Aimelle. I hoped I could be there in time to intervene before any hemolymph was shed. But I lost your trail for a time in the sewers…though I see now that I was not needed. I would venture that you needed to see what transpired here, Aimelle, even as I wish it had involved fewer deaths."

"What now, then?" Aimelle said. "What am I going to do?"

Beldar hefted his weapon. "As I said, we all choose our own destiny, Aimelle. There are two paths before you: that of the Queen, and that of the Matxino. You know what your Queen would ask of you, and you may have my weapon if that is what you wish to do. Or you can follow me back to our base, and the long, uncertain path of the Matxino."

He held the long, deadly arm out toward Aimelle. She reached up, grasped it…and pulled herself upright.

"Show me the truth," she said. "Show me what it is the Queen would have me die rather than know."

To be concluded...