Stained Gold, Red Rising Fan Fiction

Red Rise Part 1

Mother bursts into our modest apartment, bloodied razor in hand, then shuts and locks the door behind her. Crimson droplets speckle her tight-fitting blouse and loose-hanging hair. Anger radiates from her gold-flecked eyes. "Victra, get dressed and pack," she says out of breath. "It's a bloodydamn coup. The military has decided to cut ties with the Covin Legislature and throw in with the Gorgon Kingdom. As we speak Gorgon dreadnoughts are dropping into orbit and firing on loyalist ships."

My honey-hued eyes fly wide, but my years of training kick in and I dart to my bed-chamber to stuff the essentials into a backpack. My heart hammers inside my sixteen-year-old chest, but my hands are as steady as those of a veteran Helldiver. This isn't the first planet Mother and I have been forced to flee in a hurry. I've plenty of experience with last-minute exits. Especially where Gorgons are concerned.

Fuck Covin 5 and its dry-ass heat anyways, I think, though, if I'm completely honest with myself, I am going to miss Oslo, the big Obsidian boy Mother had hired so I would have a sparing partner while on this piece-of-shit backwater planet. His laugh was goofy, but he always made me smile.

"Come on, Vic. Move that ass of yours," Mother calls from the other room. "They're already going door to door dragging people out into the street. It's mostly Greys and Obsidians. But there's a number of bloodydamn Scarred Golds moving about as well."

I throw the backpack on, snatch my razor off its hook near the bedchamber's door, and bound out into the main room.

"Shhhhh." Mother stands near the apartment's only entrance, a finger to her lips. While I was gone she'd wiped the blood from her face and tied her hair back.

We both activate our pulseShields.

I hear nothing, but as soon as Mother settles into a fighting stance, I do too.

Seconds tick by.

Then minutes.

I'm just beginning to lower my razor when the door shatters inward under the blast of a pulseFist.

Mother uncoils like the killing machine she is and explodes through the smoking wreckage, carving a path of destruction like only a true daughter of House Lykos can.

I follow, spinning left to Mother's right. There I find three mid Greys, two high Reds, and a low Copper. All are armed, but none seem to have expected Gold. I slash the first Grey's throat with a two-handed strike from low guard that carries me forward, off-balance. But (luckily) I somehow manage to decapitate the second Grey with my over-extended return swing, which also accidentally cleaves the Copper in two and lops an arm off one of the Reds. The remaining Grey, a mean-looking slant-eyed girl, empties her scorcher into my pulseShield, but it holds, so I stab her through the heart before toggling my razor into whip form and catching the last Red around the neck, severing his spine as he attempts to flee down the hallway.

"Sloppy," Mother chides, finishing off the one-armed Red I'd failed to kill, and snatching a pulseFist off the body of a dead Obsidian on her side of the doorway; a big grungy fuck covered in scars. She then tosses me a Grey's scorcher and we're soon diving down one of the high rise tenement's gravTubes into zero g.

Out in the city streets, chaos rules. Loyalist Covin 5 citizens war with Gorgons and unloyal Covin 5 military units. So our bloodstained clothing, weaponry, and pulseShields draw zero attention.

"Where're we headed," I ask two hours later as Mother and I hunker behind a burned-out tank. At first, we'd made a move for the spaceport, but not long after that, it fell to the Gorgons. Next, we tried for the underground hyper tube, but that too had soon fallen to them.

"We're being hunted," Mother replies, standing slightly so she can peek over the burned-out wreckage. Along the way, we'd scavaged pulseRifles, bits of armor, and some optics. She uses those optics to scan the rubble, rooftops, and sky. It doesn't take long for her shoulders to slump.

"What is it, Momma?"

She tosses the optics aside and slides down into the rubble next to me. "I'm sorry, Lil Reaper. But I fucked up. I thought this was the beginning of a civil war..." She rocks her bloodied head back and forth. "...It's not. I should've known better. This is about us."

"Momma--" I begin to tear up.

"Shhhh. There's no time." Mother unbuckles the beat-up breastplate she'd foraged off a dead Gorgon and leans it against the tank. She then reaches back behind her, holds her ponytail up out of the way, and drags the Golden Reaper pendant dangling around her neck over her head. The same pendant she's always refused to remove. The same pendant her mother had gifted her back when she'd been a young girl and Victra hadn't even been a thought drifting on the cosmic winds.

I gulp as she slips the pendant over my head, then kisses my cheek, allowing her lips to linger.

"This is a beacon. Never allow it out of your sight. I activated it not long ago. Your uncle is on his way, so be ready. You may only have seconds when he arrives."

"Uncle?" I ask. Mother had always told me she was an only child. "Momma, please, you're scaring me."

"Good, you need to be scared. This is no longer a game." She pats my hand. "Your uncle's name is Julius au Lykos, the Stained Gold."

"Stained Gold? I thought those were just bedtime stories?"

"They were. They were also my way of teaching you about our family." She smiles softly and drags a bloodstained hand through my golden locks. "I'm so sorry, Victra. I tried to give you a life free of this shit. But now I'm gonna need you to be strong, prime?"

I nod. But inside I am anything but prime. Confusion and betrayal wrestle in the pit of my stomach. I can't wrap my blown mind around the idea of my mother--whom I've always trusted unconditionally--lying to me about our family for all these years. What else might she have lied about?