The Flower of Borquet

Written/arranged by

His Eloquence,
Il Gran Teletestros del Borquet

CHAPTER 1
FIORE DELLA MORTE

   “Beast of Borquet-” she began, believing I would likely interrupt her.
   Unaware of this assumption, I obliged. “Seriously?”
   “Yes, lord Teletestros. ‘Beast of Borquet,’ exactly like that.” She stared at me with a peculiar intensity. The intensity itself was not peculiar. Fiore Della Morte, the Flower of Death, whose name I had given upon witnessing her ferocity for the first time, had never done a single thing in her life without said passion. If she had not been intense, it would have been more peculiar. No, the oddity was the form that it took. It was as if she was readying to defend herself against any attack, where normally I would have expected her to look as if she was prepared to launch herself at me for any suggestion that what she had said was not the complete truth. Defensive, rather than aggressive? I could not remember the last time I had seen that from her, if ever.
   I frowned slightly, and the slightest touch of concern alighted upon my face. I took in the set of the chiseled jaw, the creasing of the strong brow, the piercing gaze of the flinty blue eyes. “But, little Flower,” I said to the enormous woman, ”they do not speak.”
   “Never even once? Not in all your stories?” she asked.
   I smiled magnanimously, in my admittedly infuriating way. “Not once in all of the tales of Borquesian might and valor. Not a one.”
   Her pale blue eyes narrowed at me, annoyed that I did not appear to be taking her seriously. In spite of myself, I felt my pulse quicken. Impressive I may be, but no Borquesian has ever been near as impressive as her. I am quite tall, yet she towered over me as if I were but a child. Her face was cut from granite, her body chiseled of distilled violence. I marveled at her musculature, and at her many Gifts, many more than any other Borquesian in history. She could kill me before I took my next breath, and we both knew it, and yet it was proper for her to show deference, and we both knew it. She considered this for a moment, and then her eyelids crept slowly away from each other as bugs under a lifted rock in respect of my station. I was quite proud of her in the moment for only showing this slight disrespect, though I now wish that she had shown more, had challenged me further and provoked a more serious consideration from me.
   She spoke again, solemnly this time, and surprised me again. “I swear it on the body of God above, on the Gifts He has granted to me, and on my future within His glory.”
   I fell silent for a moment, overwhelmed with emotion by the great drama being enacted within my very office, and to allow said drama a short time to grow appropriately as I saw it. “Fiore Della Morte, The High Beastess herself, swears upon the holy form of God, the bountiful boons given her by Him, and her very ability to join Him in death?” I asked breathlessly. ”You have never done this thing, swearing upon such holies. You? His most faithful? His most wrathful? Oh, surely I am being had. Who is it that put you up to this?” I asked, the back of my hand pressed against my head, my body tilting as if I were about to fall out of my seat. It was all very well executed, though the memory of such foppishness now pains me greatly.
   “Lord Teletestros, you know I do not lie and you know I do not prefer that epith-”
   I sighed heavily enough to cut her off. “So one of these creatures just - incorrectly - addresses you and then skitters off?” I was annoyed it had said “Beast” instead of “Beastess” as I preferred that word and had designed the title myself, but chose not to pursue that argument in at least this moment. The suffix “ess” had been a point of contention, and one that now feels so ridiculous that I considered editing it out in scribing this telling of the tale. Alas, I feel that specificity is important, and that includes my own follies.
   “No, Gran Teletestros, I was attempting to get to that.”
   I tapped my foot to feign impatience. “Well, get on with it,” I urged testily, ensuring she knew exactly whose fault I felt it actually was that she had not yet given me the full story.
   She nodded, thought some unfair thoughts about me which I will not reproduce here, cleared her throat, and then continued. “It said ‘High Beast of Borquet. What do you know of the altar at which you worship?’”
   I sat forward in my seat, expectantly, but nothing else came. “Well?” I asked, prompting.
   “That is all, Grande Narratore. Immediately after it said this, my team swept into the room behind me and it was gone. The workers had gathered the necessary ore and we were to leave. I led us out, but by His light and might, there is nothing else I have thought of since then. An enemy speaking? And to me? Why?”
   I stroked my chin. “Perhaps your reputation precedes you, even amongst the enemy, and they sent out a ranking officer to taunt you?”
   She shrugged. “Perhaps. It felt not like a taunt, though. More like a prompting, as if it wanted me to think on this.”
   “And what do you think?”
   “I think I want to go back,” she said, with much gravitas.
   My eyebrows shot up at this. “To the mines? You would take a team, potentially to their deaths, for a personal mission?”
   “I will not take a team.” Sensing my hesitation, she pushed forward. ”Am I not Priest-Commander? Am I not il Campione di Dio? I am capable, I do not need to endanger others with my own pursuits.”
   “You do not need to endanger others?” I scoffed. “You are right, you are Priest-Commander of the Gifted. You are the Champion of God. The most powerful of us all. So if you are not here then you endanger us all. If you go, you will leave alone and die alone.”
   “But I do have the implant, and you do have exclusive permission to tell my story if I do die.” Her steel blue eyes bored into mine, and I squirmed under their weight. She knew my weakness in true, and this I could not deny. Watching her grow, seeing the power and favor she had gained, transcribing the details of the many glorious battles she had won had taught me one thing. You see, I had done much for Borquet. I had taken a broken, fractured history spread generation to generation by word of mouth and turned it into a genuine chronicling of my people, saved for all time and for anyone to view. This was a massive undertaking, and considered (by very many) a significant turning point in the history of Borquet. And yet have I now long known that my great Gift to my kind would not be this work, but one greater. The chronicling of the death of Fiore Della Morte, for no more glorious story could be told than of whatever might manage to kill her, and only God has ever been more important to us than the tale we leave behind.
   I sat in silence for some time, considering many great and important things. The implant in her brain recorded her thoughts in text format, and would instantly send all it had recorded to a predetermined receiver (which I owned) the moment its host died or it was removed or badly damaged. I would use this thought record to construct the tale of her death, immortalizing her forever and ensuring glory as no other Borquesian has known. On the other hand… “If you die alone in a mine searching for something you thought you heard, your tale will be terrible. There is no glory, no honor in that. You have much power, yes, but not enough to wade into an army of the enemy alone. You will die ignominiously and go unremembered.”
   Her face was grave. “I will go and receive more Gifts.”
   My mouth hung slack for a moment. “You- you cannot! The death of your mind is not a better death! You have already taken many more Gifts than thought possible. You will go mad the moment you drink of Him!”
   She seemed more resolute than she felt. “I have none of the symptoms, I have survived doing this much longer than almost all others, and with far more Gifts! I am fine as yet, more power will not taint my mind. You know it, I am incorruptible. His chosen warrior.” It made sense, yet we both doubted.
   “What color are Davad's eyes?” I asked.
   She was quiet for a moment, searching her mind frantically for the name, before recalling the true name and realizing that I was testing her memory in two ways. “My brother Da-ved,” she snapped, “has blue eyes, as I do.”
   I had thought, originally, of pointing out that memory issues were the first symptom. Of arguing that her not displaying others was not proof enough that the process was not happening, that she was not going to lose her mind and turn into a beast in truth. But the way she looked at me, the way she said it, showed me that the memory issues could not be used to stop her. Nothing could. I chose to not tell her that Daved had green eyes.