'ᴡᴇ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴇɴᴛɪᴍᴇɴᴛ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʙᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.'
Only one month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have caught.
One month filled with blood, tribulations, and l...
-to bring or direct toward a common center or objective
-to gather into one body, mass, or force
-to accumulate (a toxic substance) in bodily tissues
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We shake strapped in seats, and the only sounds penetrating the inside of the convoy is the fine rattling of metal or the shuffling of feet. The rustling of uniforms. The static shifting of a signal incoming on a radio.
Right next to me, Hector Viper sifts his fingers into his belt and smooths over it while he talks.
I barely listen with one ear, eyes glancing around, taking in the silent forms. The hardened faces. I barked general commands in Archeon. Now I have to leave the choice of positions and vantage points to people that are in the position to demand them.
I have as little power over anything that happens here as I had strapped to a wall in manacles, spitting and biting in a cell. It rubs me off the wrong way and tingles on my nerves. I feel incompetent. I don't like feelingincompetent. But such is the nature of soldiers in an army. We are disposable.
We are disposable as the creatures we breed and the alliances we make.
War makes widows. War makes corpses. War makes an army. War makes fighters.
This is the very machinery of war. I would consider this the drumbeat of it.
My vision rocks, staring out of the armored window into the world racing, a sky filled with dazzling clouds of smoke.
Ruins.
A city made of something broken but still standing longer than any bone could withstand turning to dust. A place that should be filled with something very much fouler than any smog or polluting light in Archeon.
Radiation isn't a joke. It was a warning graced on the search party in the tunnels. It was written on maps and mouths on how it twists and cripples. But this city is flawless and void of it, and any mention and warning was a lie.
I study the empty, crumbling stones in the distance.
Seemingly empty. But not yet. Not really.
It seems almost ironic that the force drips down over ruins and lies after swiping the rebels under the carpet of propaganda for so long.
With the sliver of something unforeseeable and perhaps a hint of incompetence and a spark of too many emotions, everything has turned foul. That is why we are here, after the Bowl, after the abyss of mud, the lightning, the death of silver and the free fleeing of the Red.
I would laugh. If I felt like it.
Instead, I see myself, pushed back hair, scars fresh on my mouth and cheek.
