Army of One

Prologue: Mother

Darkness. That is all I see. For months, I have rested in this maze of abandoned waterways, vacillating my plans to flit for my obsessive fear that the lance-knights that have been murdering my brothers and sisters in droves on the surface are going to tail me, too. I do not know of the details of what has eventuated recently, but what I do perceive is that not many of the Ciro have survived. History has prefigured what oft betides when a myriad of people from the same race are attacked all at once: genocide accompanied by erasement. I will not tolerate this treatment of the Ciro, one of the oldest and mightiest people to walk this earth. I supplicate that whoever learns of this text proliferates it afar and abroad, across the shore of Hamilton and all over the waves of Anchor. Spread it down the creeks of Augie and around in the clouds of Mathis, lest this slaying passes unnoticed by history.

They are murdering us. One by one, our corses are falling to the floor at the paws of the Charltons. Millions of us are going up in smoke in pits of waxy fire every single day. I opine that no fewer than one billion of us have drawn their last breath over the course of this year, since the hostilities commenced. We have shifted for ourselves by wiping out hundreds of millions of their murderers, and yet it is proving to be unfructuous. I have taken cover, for my pregnancy has left me easily too worn out to get stuck in with the discord. Truth be told, at this stage, assistance would be redundant. I have spent my tiresome days listening to hollers and vociferations. I used to view them as the worst sounds one could hear: bays of excruciation with wails of pain. But what I did not understand was the indelible agonizing silence that would come after. I no longer hear wounded voices upwards of me. Now, all I hear is the hooting zephyr from end to end in the watercourses and the seldom pounding of cloots on the stone above my pate. That could mean any number of things, yet I cannot help but be plagued by bouts of mania over the possibility that it betokens the genocidals' victory, that they have driven the Ciro to annihilation. I hope I will discover for myself sooner rather than later. I can cognize my infant's time is scheduled sorely soon. I am conscious of myself getting increasingly fragile by the day, and I afear that I am not prepared to carry on after something so toilsome as childbirth. It is greedy for me to hope that I come out right as rain, so, to the exclusion of everything else, my hope is that my child is born to be in rude health and fair-skinned, the same as her pater, safe from the horrible schemes of those above. She will be known as Phylicia, for good luck. She will be fair, a half-Ciro with the Sun in her veins together with the tincture of Charlton on her coloring; for all that, she will be a Ciro all the same. They will be dying to slay me, yet they will not bring themselves to kill her, someone who takes after them. They will make out her yawps through the thin stone and envelop her with acceptance like they would one of their own. They can try to decimate each one of us, but even at the close of the terminal breath heaved through the last umber Ciro chest, we will still be among the living. There is a warrant for our survival as the oldest race, an incentive for our ichor of gold to run for millennia longer than that of the feculent kerns who poach us like mutts.

That warrant lies enclosed by an inselberg only hickory globes can see. Immersed in olden shrubbery, swerving with mazes of monsters maleficent to those unbeknown to the Sun. It is north, and south, and east, and west all at once. It is a Zion of fruits imbued with toxicants. Its nucleus is unrevealed beneath, where fire neighbors water and mutant critters are stashed from men and women. In its core is the tucked-away secret of our perdurability. It is the answer to any inquiries a Ciro reading this may have. For everybody else, it is the unshaken pavé for death. It is a gnarly thing knowing how to discover it, and a gnarly thing knowing to what scope I should characterize and denude its secrets, for I do not know whose palms this information may gravitate to.

I leave this missive here for you in the good expectation that you are one of my people, and that you are worthy in full measure to be of service to the Ciro. There is naught worse than a prestigious race hounded to eradication. We are not animals. We are liege lords. And, in due time, they will come to know of us.

And they will come to know that you do not begin hostilities with the children of the Sun.

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GLOSSARY:

note: these definitions are story-exclusive. they may mean other things in other texts. also, i copied and modified these definitions from various dictionaries, all rights go to them.

agonizing: causing great physical and mental pain.

annihilation: complete destruction.

betide: happen.

betokens: be a sign of.

bouts: short periods of intense activity of a specified kind.

cloots: a cloven hoof.

cognize: become aware of.

excruciation: physical and mental torment.

feculent: of waste matter.

genocidals: those deliberately and systematically destroying a racial group. {made-up word}

hollers: loud cries.

hooting: (of an owl) utter a hoot. {used figuratively}

ichor: the fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the Greek gods. {used figuratively}

indelible: not able to be forgotten.

kerns: peasants; rustics.

lest: with the intention of preventing (something undesirable); to avoid the risk of.

mania: mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity.

myriad: an extremely great number of people.

oft: literary form of often.

opine: hold and state as one's opinion.

pate: a person's head. {used humorously}

proliferates: increases rapidly in number; multiplies.

redundant: no longer useful.

seldom: not often; rarely.

tincture: a slight trace of something.

unfructuous: unfruitful.

vacillating: wavering between different actions; irresolute.

vociferations: to cry out loudly, especially in protest.

zephyr: a soft gentle breeze.