barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
What A Woman's Got To Do: 21
Three angry women stood around the limp body of Etienne.
Arrafin glared at Elena. Elena glared at Yuek. Yuek yawned elaborately, one slender hand in front of her mouth.
"Do you have a better idea? Or are you just going to stare at me until your friend starts to decay?"
Elena's scowl took on an even angrier twist. Behind her, the remaining civilians waited silently, watching the bitter exchange with worried, uncertain eyes.
"Do you have to be such a bitch all the time? Our friends are dead, you evil c**t!"
Yuek smirked, but Arrafin spoke before Elena lost her temper entirely.
"Elena, she's going to help bring Etienne back. Please."
"It's okay, darling. She'd like to forget that I already helped bring her back."
"F**k you! I wish you'd left me dead! You think this erases the millions you've killed?"
"Pull your gun out again, Elena. I bet that makes you feel better."
"What is WRONG with you? Don't you have any--"
"Didn't you hear Isaac? I turned good. I'm all better now."
The three women went back to glaring at each other. Etienne's body lay on a hastily-assembled travois, wrapped in torn robes. His injuries appeared to have healed, but he lay lifeless and empty. The travois sat cross-wise in the ancient road, with Arrafin and Yuek standing on the side back towards Zuyang, the terrible whirlwind of souls still visible rising up behind them, while Elena stood on the opposite side, with the civilians behind her.
Arrafin's mouth twisted as she considered Yuek's words.
"Speaking of Isaac..."
Elena sighed.
"You mean, our friend who used to be Isaac until he turned into an enormous panther and ran away? Yeah, well, if I run into him -- and he's not a cat -- I'll tell him you're... what? Coming along a little later? With Etienne?"
"Yeah. We'll be along."
"Fine. Then I'll see you soon."
"Yeah."
"Great."
"Okay."
"See you."
"Yeah. See you."
Arrafin and Elena stared at each other. Elena thought back to how her friend had been at first, shy and lost in books and so unaware of the world around her. A girl, coltish and hesitant. They'd all felt so protective towards her. And now. Standing beside a former monster who'd lost all her supernatural powers, but who stood no less striking with her exotic beauty.
Still. A monster.
"How long were you lying to us, Arrafin? Did you laugh at us? Did you think you were better than us?"
"Elena. It doesn't matter now."
"It matters. It matters that you went behind our backs when we trusted you."
Arrafin shook her head.
"I love her."
Elena turned her glare on Yuek.
"I will always hate you for taking her away from us. You'll always be a monster in my eyes."
For just a moment, there was a sympathetic sadness in the Lohanese woman's slanted eyes.
"We have that much in common, then. Come on, Arrafin."
Yuek hoisted up the travois with an easy shrug of her shoulders and without looking back began dragging Etienne's body back down the pitted cobblestones. Arrafin brooded at Elena but just as the Saijadani woman turned away, the Naridic girl rushed at her and threw her thin arms around broad shoulders.
"Elena. I'm so sorry. About. About everything. I didn't mean. I just."
She pulled back, tears in her eyes.
"I do love her, Elena. I can't explain it. Maybe after we've got Etienne back we could. Maybe talk about it. If you."
Elena's scowl twisted even further.
"Yeah. Of course. After you get Etienne. You better go."
They stared at each other, neither quite able to find the words to express what they both feared. The ending of a friendship. Arrafin had a terrible premonition she would never see Elena again, but she couldn't follow her friend.
Not when her lover was headed in the other direction, grimly dragging Etienne's corpse behind her.
"Be safe."
The two women turned away from each other. Elena strode further up the inclined roadway and gathered the civilians around her.
"Alright, everyone. We're going to get out of this. The coast is a few days' journey from here, and from there we can find a port city if we just keep heading south. From there I'm sure we can find transport home."
They had a thousand questions, all of which were variations on "Are we going to survive?" Elena could only offer reassurances she didn't feel herself, but she got them moving and that was enough for now. The little band made its way up the switchback road leading over the ridge that overlooked the city.
At the top of the ridge Elena looked back.
Zuyang lay spread out across a broad valley beneath them, black ruins in a blasted landscape. It looked like some sort of angry god had punched the earth here, pounding the city flat and spraying death in all directions.
Far below, just where the road entered the crumbling remains of the city wall, she could make out two figures making their way into the heart of the metropolis.
Elena scowled and turned away. She concentrated, seeking for some sign of her friend Isaac. To her surprise, he was nearby and asleep. She crossed over to Hauthar, the burly Naridic soldier.
"One of my friends is down in that ravine. He's asleep, but we should be cautious. He--"
"Yeah. He turned into a cat."
"That's the one."
"Let me load my musket."
*****
Two women staggered into Shang's laboratory, both wide-eyed and panting. Arrafin leaned against a wall, trying to catch her breath.
"Did you? Did you see? Shang? And. Collette?"
Yuek let Etienne's body crash to the flagstones.
"Shang? No. I just heard. So much screaming. Ancestors."
Arrafin put her hands to her head. She concentrated hard, trying to drive out the visions and terrors that had filled her vision.
"Okay. We have to do this. Do this now."
Yuek was already unstrapping Etienne's corpse from the travois. With an unladylike grunt she heaved the half-Kishak onto the first table, and stabbed tubes into him. She reeled backwards but managed to pull herself up onto the second table. Her grunts of pain were more ladylike as she inserted unsavoury tubes into her own body.
"I hate this bastard. Arrafin. Tie me down. So I don't thrash."
"Right, right."
It seemed like their breathing was somehow amplified, echoing in this terrible gleaming chamber until it was even louder than the hurricane outside. Arrafin fumbled with straps and then found one of the remaining crystal spheres. She cast her mind upwards.
oh my god what's baby the baby she the whole wall i never fire god my arm how my arm where the noise fire what help me help me help help help help help
Arrafin collapsed to the floor, drooling as her mind continued to sort through a frantic mass of shrieking memories, seeking those ones that belonged to her young friend.
And at last. Brash and reckless and brave. Etienne.
She yanked, no cajoling this time no time she just pulled and pulled and slammed Etienne into the sphere. She had just enough strength to drop the sphere into the mechanism.
Yuek, as dazed as she was, lay crying in anticipation of the agony about to strike her. She heard the sphere drop into place and for a second thought that maybe it wouldn't work this time.
And then her body heaved, arcing up as she screamed, tearing out the back of her throat with her terror and her pain. She felt Shang's legacy reaching into her, torturing her one more time and an endless parade of the tortures she'd suffered and inflicted over centuries hammered through her now-mortal mind.
Yuek Man Chong screamed and screamed and screamed. Her soul was partially drawn out of her, bound into Etienne was a sort of stitching for his own soul. She was weakened and torn and the pain went on and on and on and she screamed and screamed and screamed.
Arrafin put her hands over her ears. She couldn't watch her lover suffering so she watched Etienne, watching his eyes and his chest, waiting for the sudden inhalation there it is and she leapt for the controls, shutting the infernal machine down immediately.
Yuek wept, moaning with sobs as Arrafin untied her. Her dark eyes rolled alarmingly but she managed to focus on Arrafin at last.
"Ara-chan. I don't feel so good."
Untied, she crashed to the floor in a tangle of long limbs. Her head flopped to one side and she lost track of Arrafin until the Naridic girl grabbed hold of her.
"Okay. It's okay. Etienne? Can you walk?"
"Eerg. Afl."
Arrafin took a deep breath and tried not to cry. She could feel her sanity slipping away, and memories of what Elena had done to herself here kept coming back to her. She had a pistol in her bag...
With a shudder, Arrafin drew the gun from her bag and hurled it off down the length of the lab. It clattered and slid under some mechanical apparatus.
"Okay. Man Chong? Can you stand? Come on, I'll help you to the Sanctuary. Come on, my love. I'll help you."
Leaning on the skinny Naridic girl, Yuek managed to get to her feet and they made their unsteady way out of the lab.
"Etienne? Just wait here. I'll be right back, okay? Don't move."
"Blbbgfm."
"Good. I'll be right back."
Gral fluttered over their heads as they climbed the stairs, but zipped down to tuck himself into Arrafin's shoulder as they emerged into the insane fury of Zuyang. Arrafin yelled over the shrieking winds.
"Come on. Come on, just a little more. Come on."
Slowly, staggering from one foot to the next, the two women made their way around splintered blocks of granite, past the mute foundations of what were once houses or business or something, across a dust-strewn street full of holes and irregular lumps where cobbles had come loose. Yuek fell to her knees, and Arrafin, unable to support the weight of the larger woman, collapsed with her.
"Ara-chan. I can't. Just leave me. Let me die, Arrafin. Please. I hurt so much. Please. I'm so tired, Ara-chan."
Arrafin burst into tears, but she turned her sadness into rage and heaved on her lover's arms.
"Come on, damn you! I have been through too much to give up on you now. Please, Man Chong, please. I need you. Please. Come on. Just a little further. You can see the gate, right there. Come on. Please."
She pulled and pulled, and at last, the bone-weary Lohanese woman struggled to her feet and they limped the last hundred yards to the Sanctuary gate.
Inside, the terrors subsided. The grass was green and thick and Yuek crashed down, fainting. Arrafin knelt beside her, still manic with fear and stress, stroking black hair from a still-perfect face.
"Safe now. Safe and perfect always now. Always love. Always."
Her head came up, lolled side to side, and focused on the gate.
"Etienne. Yes. You stay. I get. Him. Back soon. Love. Love. Always."
Arrafin pushed herself up and staggered back into the ruins. She had to get Etienne. The slight figure, bent sideways against the howling wind, reeled drunkenly along the devastated street.
In the wrong direction. Arrafin was lost.
She saw Matai Shang suddenly before her, laughing as he tore her father to pieces.
No. Vision. Not real. No.
Stones melted and ran, laughing at her, making faces. Her lover's face, laughing and sneering.
No.
Something shrieked, sobbed and a child ran in front of her, laughing and spurting blood from its mouth. Arrafin leapt back, tripped and fell.
Her head struck an upthrust stone. Bone cracked and splintered. Blood erupted from a terrible gaping hole in the back of her head. Her eyes stared upwards, empty, dust starting to gather on the still-wet corneas.
Gral shrieked inside. His tiny body clung to her as he keened a grief no creature so small had ever felt. All his world died before him and he had only suffering to replace it.
*****
In the relative calm of the Sanctuary, a beautiful if somewhat bedraggled Lohanese woman opened her eyes.
"Arrafin?"
Yuek Man Chong sat up, looking around her.
Looking around at all the dancing, capering, giggling figures around her. Looking up at the couple standing there. The woman smiled and made a gesture of introduction to the antlered man beside her.
"The King desires you. You shall be his slave now. And you shall please him, Beauteous One."
Overhead, thousands of dead souls, unaware of anything around them, unaware even of the new soul that had joined them, just kept screaming and screaming and screaming.
THE END
Three angry women stood around the limp body of Etienne.
Arrafin glared at Elena. Elena glared at Yuek. Yuek yawned elaborately, one slender hand in front of her mouth.
"Do you have a better idea? Or are you just going to stare at me until your friend starts to decay?"
Elena's scowl took on an even angrier twist. Behind her, the remaining civilians waited silently, watching the bitter exchange with worried, uncertain eyes.
"Do you have to be such a bitch all the time? Our friends are dead, you evil c**t!"
Yuek smirked, but Arrafin spoke before Elena lost her temper entirely.
"Elena, she's going to help bring Etienne back. Please."
"It's okay, darling. She'd like to forget that I already helped bring her back."
"F**k you! I wish you'd left me dead! You think this erases the millions you've killed?"
"Pull your gun out again, Elena. I bet that makes you feel better."
"What is WRONG with you? Don't you have any--"
"Didn't you hear Isaac? I turned good. I'm all better now."
The three women went back to glaring at each other. Etienne's body lay on a hastily-assembled travois, wrapped in torn robes. His injuries appeared to have healed, but he lay lifeless and empty. The travois sat cross-wise in the ancient road, with Arrafin and Yuek standing on the side back towards Zuyang, the terrible whirlwind of souls still visible rising up behind them, while Elena stood on the opposite side, with the civilians behind her.
Arrafin's mouth twisted as she considered Yuek's words.
"Speaking of Isaac..."
Elena sighed.
"You mean, our friend who used to be Isaac until he turned into an enormous panther and ran away? Yeah, well, if I run into him -- and he's not a cat -- I'll tell him you're... what? Coming along a little later? With Etienne?"
"Yeah. We'll be along."
"Fine. Then I'll see you soon."
"Yeah."
"Great."
"Okay."
"See you."
"Yeah. See you."
Arrafin and Elena stared at each other. Elena thought back to how her friend had been at first, shy and lost in books and so unaware of the world around her. A girl, coltish and hesitant. They'd all felt so protective towards her. And now. Standing beside a former monster who'd lost all her supernatural powers, but who stood no less striking with her exotic beauty.
Still. A monster.
"How long were you lying to us, Arrafin? Did you laugh at us? Did you think you were better than us?"
"Elena. It doesn't matter now."
"It matters. It matters that you went behind our backs when we trusted you."
Arrafin shook her head.
"I love her."
Elena turned her glare on Yuek.
"I will always hate you for taking her away from us. You'll always be a monster in my eyes."
For just a moment, there was a sympathetic sadness in the Lohanese woman's slanted eyes.
"We have that much in common, then. Come on, Arrafin."
Yuek hoisted up the travois with an easy shrug of her shoulders and without looking back began dragging Etienne's body back down the pitted cobblestones. Arrafin brooded at Elena but just as the Saijadani woman turned away, the Naridic girl rushed at her and threw her thin arms around broad shoulders.
"Elena. I'm so sorry. About. About everything. I didn't mean. I just."
She pulled back, tears in her eyes.
"I do love her, Elena. I can't explain it. Maybe after we've got Etienne back we could. Maybe talk about it. If you."
Elena's scowl twisted even further.
"Yeah. Of course. After you get Etienne. You better go."
They stared at each other, neither quite able to find the words to express what they both feared. The ending of a friendship. Arrafin had a terrible premonition she would never see Elena again, but she couldn't follow her friend.
Not when her lover was headed in the other direction, grimly dragging Etienne's corpse behind her.
"Be safe."
The two women turned away from each other. Elena strode further up the inclined roadway and gathered the civilians around her.
"Alright, everyone. We're going to get out of this. The coast is a few days' journey from here, and from there we can find a port city if we just keep heading south. From there I'm sure we can find transport home."
They had a thousand questions, all of which were variations on "Are we going to survive?" Elena could only offer reassurances she didn't feel herself, but she got them moving and that was enough for now. The little band made its way up the switchback road leading over the ridge that overlooked the city.
At the top of the ridge Elena looked back.
Zuyang lay spread out across a broad valley beneath them, black ruins in a blasted landscape. It looked like some sort of angry god had punched the earth here, pounding the city flat and spraying death in all directions.
Far below, just where the road entered the crumbling remains of the city wall, she could make out two figures making their way into the heart of the metropolis.
Elena scowled and turned away. She concentrated, seeking for some sign of her friend Isaac. To her surprise, he was nearby and asleep. She crossed over to Hauthar, the burly Naridic soldier.
"One of my friends is down in that ravine. He's asleep, but we should be cautious. He--"
"Yeah. He turned into a cat."
"That's the one."
"Let me load my musket."
*****
Two women staggered into Shang's laboratory, both wide-eyed and panting. Arrafin leaned against a wall, trying to catch her breath.
"Did you? Did you see? Shang? And. Collette?"
Yuek let Etienne's body crash to the flagstones.
"Shang? No. I just heard. So much screaming. Ancestors."
Arrafin put her hands to her head. She concentrated hard, trying to drive out the visions and terrors that had filled her vision.
"Okay. We have to do this. Do this now."
Yuek was already unstrapping Etienne's corpse from the travois. With an unladylike grunt she heaved the half-Kishak onto the first table, and stabbed tubes into him. She reeled backwards but managed to pull herself up onto the second table. Her grunts of pain were more ladylike as she inserted unsavoury tubes into her own body.
"I hate this bastard. Arrafin. Tie me down. So I don't thrash."
"Right, right."
It seemed like their breathing was somehow amplified, echoing in this terrible gleaming chamber until it was even louder than the hurricane outside. Arrafin fumbled with straps and then found one of the remaining crystal spheres. She cast her mind upwards.
oh my god what's baby the baby she the whole wall i never fire god my arm how my arm where the noise fire what help me help me help help help help help
Arrafin collapsed to the floor, drooling as her mind continued to sort through a frantic mass of shrieking memories, seeking those ones that belonged to her young friend.
And at last. Brash and reckless and brave. Etienne.
She yanked, no cajoling this time no time she just pulled and pulled and slammed Etienne into the sphere. She had just enough strength to drop the sphere into the mechanism.
Yuek, as dazed as she was, lay crying in anticipation of the agony about to strike her. She heard the sphere drop into place and for a second thought that maybe it wouldn't work this time.
And then her body heaved, arcing up as she screamed, tearing out the back of her throat with her terror and her pain. She felt Shang's legacy reaching into her, torturing her one more time and an endless parade of the tortures she'd suffered and inflicted over centuries hammered through her now-mortal mind.
Yuek Man Chong screamed and screamed and screamed. Her soul was partially drawn out of her, bound into Etienne was a sort of stitching for his own soul. She was weakened and torn and the pain went on and on and on and she screamed and screamed and screamed.
Arrafin put her hands over her ears. She couldn't watch her lover suffering so she watched Etienne, watching his eyes and his chest, waiting for the sudden inhalation there it is and she leapt for the controls, shutting the infernal machine down immediately.
Yuek wept, moaning with sobs as Arrafin untied her. Her dark eyes rolled alarmingly but she managed to focus on Arrafin at last.
"Ara-chan. I don't feel so good."
Untied, she crashed to the floor in a tangle of long limbs. Her head flopped to one side and she lost track of Arrafin until the Naridic girl grabbed hold of her.
"Okay. It's okay. Etienne? Can you walk?"
"Eerg. Afl."
Arrafin took a deep breath and tried not to cry. She could feel her sanity slipping away, and memories of what Elena had done to herself here kept coming back to her. She had a pistol in her bag...
With a shudder, Arrafin drew the gun from her bag and hurled it off down the length of the lab. It clattered and slid under some mechanical apparatus.
"Okay. Man Chong? Can you stand? Come on, I'll help you to the Sanctuary. Come on, my love. I'll help you."
Leaning on the skinny Naridic girl, Yuek managed to get to her feet and they made their unsteady way out of the lab.
"Etienne? Just wait here. I'll be right back, okay? Don't move."
"Blbbgfm."
"Good. I'll be right back."
Gral fluttered over their heads as they climbed the stairs, but zipped down to tuck himself into Arrafin's shoulder as they emerged into the insane fury of Zuyang. Arrafin yelled over the shrieking winds.
"Come on. Come on, just a little more. Come on."
Slowly, staggering from one foot to the next, the two women made their way around splintered blocks of granite, past the mute foundations of what were once houses or business or something, across a dust-strewn street full of holes and irregular lumps where cobbles had come loose. Yuek fell to her knees, and Arrafin, unable to support the weight of the larger woman, collapsed with her.
"Ara-chan. I can't. Just leave me. Let me die, Arrafin. Please. I hurt so much. Please. I'm so tired, Ara-chan."
Arrafin burst into tears, but she turned her sadness into rage and heaved on her lover's arms.
"Come on, damn you! I have been through too much to give up on you now. Please, Man Chong, please. I need you. Please. Come on. Just a little further. You can see the gate, right there. Come on. Please."
She pulled and pulled, and at last, the bone-weary Lohanese woman struggled to her feet and they limped the last hundred yards to the Sanctuary gate.
Inside, the terrors subsided. The grass was green and thick and Yuek crashed down, fainting. Arrafin knelt beside her, still manic with fear and stress, stroking black hair from a still-perfect face.
"Safe now. Safe and perfect always now. Always love. Always."
Her head came up, lolled side to side, and focused on the gate.
"Etienne. Yes. You stay. I get. Him. Back soon. Love. Love. Always."
Arrafin pushed herself up and staggered back into the ruins. She had to get Etienne. The slight figure, bent sideways against the howling wind, reeled drunkenly along the devastated street.
In the wrong direction. Arrafin was lost.
She saw Matai Shang suddenly before her, laughing as he tore her father to pieces.
No. Vision. Not real. No.
Stones melted and ran, laughing at her, making faces. Her lover's face, laughing and sneering.
No.
Something shrieked, sobbed and a child ran in front of her, laughing and spurting blood from its mouth. Arrafin leapt back, tripped and fell.
Her head struck an upthrust stone. Bone cracked and splintered. Blood erupted from a terrible gaping hole in the back of her head. Her eyes stared upwards, empty, dust starting to gather on the still-wet corneas.
Gral shrieked inside. His tiny body clung to her as he keened a grief no creature so small had ever felt. All his world died before him and he had only suffering to replace it.
*****
In the relative calm of the Sanctuary, a beautiful if somewhat bedraggled Lohanese woman opened her eyes.
"Arrafin?"
Yuek Man Chong sat up, looking around her.
Looking around at all the dancing, capering, giggling figures around her. Looking up at the couple standing there. The woman smiled and made a gesture of introduction to the antlered man beside her.
"The King desires you. You shall be his slave now. And you shall please him, Beauteous One."
Overhead, thousands of dead souls, unaware of anything around them, unaware even of the new soul that had joined them, just kept screaming and screaming and screaming.
THE END
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