by M F Sullivan
Good thing the Lady had been waiting for eternity. This was why she was patient while Jerusalem fell, and silent as Dominia fought her losing battle, scrambled between bombing sites, and tried to make a real difference in some human lives. While developing within her mortal form, the General had been too hard on herself. She had, in fact, changed, and worked hard to repent for her odious crimes with every remaining second she had.
Those precious few seconds, compared to the mass of all those before. It was with calculated self-knowledge that the Lady hid all truths from Dominia, including her true reason for returning to the Front and kidnapping Theodore. Teddy’s utility was beyond the scope of their battle, far into the future. After all: the next Hierophant of the Holy Martyr Church would require an adviser and friend. Someone whose belief in Dominia’s righteousness was wholehearted and earnest, so that, as the Church made its transition from sedated worship of the Ciceros, there could be no hope of backslide. Theodore del Medico was, for that purpose, ideal, because the existing Hierophant could hardly help but torment the fool he oh-so-cleverly martyred to someday lure his arrant daughter back home.
With such slight effort, the finest blade was turned upon the wielder! The Hierophant sensed the Lady’s importance and dangerous nature, of course, but his hubristic overestimation of his own abilities would always be his downfall. Many a Dominia had died by his hand, yet he did not realize he had not won. Would never win. Even as UF troops closed in on the Library of Jerusalem in the weeks following the mysterious vanishing of the kidnapped Governor—along with his kidnappers—while in Atlantic airspace, the Hierophant marched his troops nearer his own demise.
And their unfortunate demises, safe to say. The Hunters were ragtag but formidable fighters who had adapted their styles for total destruction of martyrs, whether alone or in groups. As most of the low-level members of the Hierophant’s military were expendable humans, this meant the terrorist organization had a slight advantage—because they were willing to fight like they, themselves, were inhuman. Red Market women, less savage, were no less effective, and those liberated sabiyya who had been brainwashed by their Hunter captors and sometimes taught to fire guns were most formidable fighters, themselves.
While all groups defending their stake in Jerusalem laid down their lives to secure the city and defend the Lady’s avatar within the library, UF and European forces resorted to their own terror tactics. Accused members of al-Mawta were beaten, scalded, hanged, and occasionally disemboweled for officers’ supper, all of it on film for the benefit of the remaining organization members. The logic among the troops seemed to be the same logic used to justify Hunter war crimes: the same logic Dominia had once used, herself. “It’s what they’re doing to us.”
Now there was a truly unending snake! That twisting circle: pure, hopeless violence. Dominia wanted to blame the Lady for allowing the deaths of many troops on both sides, but the truth was that the General was as much to blame or more—for engaging in defense was simple perpetuation of that evil tide, when one got right to the point. On, on galloped the bleak steed of Saint Valentinian, whose bright star, Mars, still glittered with tints of red above Jerusalem’s winter nights. Two and a half weeks after the disappearance of the General, supply lines to the Lady’s library were cut off. Outside the library, human troops were forced to evacuate and regroup outside the city by that same tunnel system utilized by the industrious Hunters before the battle rose to frenzy. Within the library, fewer than one hundred men and women had been allowed to remain.
The Lady, her Bearers, and Lazarus also remained. While the goddess sat in silence in the center of her chambers, the mystic, along with the eight remaining Bearers, devoted themselves to maintaining the large building’s perimeter.
In truth, those eight women had died many times. Over the course of one iteration of reality, the nine servants of the Lady attached themselves to a variety of women more endless than even that chain of avatars. Therefore, throwing away their lives for a purpose such as this was little more than the changing of clothes. They consoled those remaining loyalists who were either die-hard servants of the Lady or devout Hunters who understood that the loss of Jerusalem to the Hierophant meant a tremendous blow against human rights. Death was not so bad, the Bearers assured the people. From within, one didn’t even notice it had happened.
Dominia had noticed, but that was because she was supposed to notice. She was not allowed to not notice, because in the noticing of the moment of death, she transcended physical boundaries to become death. Valentinian was but a prototype for the Lady, and her little shadows were those Bearers who arranged themselves in windows and, stone-faced, sniped for hours without rest. Lazarus hated this business, as always.
“I feel like I’d ought to turn myself in and settle it early sometime,” he confided in her one evening four nights into the siege. “Avoid some deaths. But then I remember who we’re fighting and I remember that the deaths will just happen anyway, and maybe more brutally than they ever could have while on the field of war.”
Never underestimate the cruelty of the Hierophant when given time to reason, agreed the Lady. You know we must wait.
Yes: they had to hold out at least as long as it took for the cavalry to arrive and get captured alongside them. This was easier said than done, as were all things in war, but for as much advance intelligence as the Hierophant could be said to possess, the Lady possessed infinitely more. Every time a strike was launched against this weak point or that part of the tunnel system, her troops were ready to defend; and though their number dwindled by a few every skirmish, their assailants were threshed in staggering numbers that forced inevitable regrouping to controlled portions of the city. The block around the library changed hands every day, every night, moving in dominance like a bloody game of capture the flag. Fortifications made amid the bombed-out ruins of the city were only further destroyed when the civilian-free area was subject to drone strikes from the Hunters positioned in other areas of the city; great damage was done to the sieging army, and to Jerusalem’s buildings.
The devastating truth was that the holy city was in ruins. From the uneasy semi-peace of Hunter occupation to the chaos emerging with Dominia’s control, the entire state had been emotionally and fiscally drained. That the Middle States had even allowed Israel’s exit was symptomatic of the fact they proved more liability than comrade. And once the Holy See of the True Catholic Church was evacuated around the time the Hierophant’s drone strikes ramped up—July of that year—palpable despair had settled upon the city of Jerusalem and failed to lift. The assault of the Hierophant’s troops was not a liberation or even an invasion so much as it was a nihilistic inevitability.
No one with a mortal, human perspective could comprehend the shortsighted nature of such ennui. It took a goddess to see that all things would be set right in the end. A goddess, a god, or a disruptive saint.
The infamous UFO crash near the peak of the Battle for Jerusalem would prove a pox on historians and an inspiration to conspiracy theorists for several centuries. Rumors abounded about the Holy Martyr Church’s suppression of documents regarding the crash, but this wasn’t true in the least. A study was released not ten years after the incident firmly and clearly explaining that the object—which crashed into the northwest corner of Jerusalem’s library during a key moment in the assault, then disappeared, thus disrupting the first concrete penetration UF troops had made into the target and forcing the assailants to regroup while ultimately leading to their most exploitable point in entry—was not unidentified. It was, in fact, merely an inter-dimensional amphibiship (or a portable tear in reality, if one preferred) that allowed passage into, through, and beyond that semi-real zone about which science would know next to nothing concrete for several more centuries. Very elementary stuff; but conspiracy nuts would light up the Internet for years, insisting the object was the miraculous intercession of some beings from outer space.
Beings that, if the (openly published and circulated)
letters of several survivors to their relatives were to be believed, resembled the martyr Saint Valentinian, a pilot of Middle Eastern origin, the Governor of the United Front, and a chubby sailor. Of the four (five, if one included the ship), only the pilot and Governor remained; at least, only the pilot and the Governor were secured. The pilot notably dashed into the fray on the opening of the ship’s door, and was therefore obtained alive by a resourceful martyr corporal who saw a real promotion in his future for the deed. The Governor, who was whisked away by that entity resembling the martyr saint, was to be secured alongside Lazarus.
But that was not to say the entity resembling Saint Valentinian was not seen on Earth again. Far from it: on the disappearance of the E4 and the sailor at its helm, the fictional martyr made a personal appearance in the Lady’s chamber to kiss her hand and startle the three Bearers hovering around her.
“They’ll be back at the breach pretty soon,” advised Valentinian. “This is our last stand.”
We perceive you brought the Governor.
“Would you expect any less? I gave him to a couple of your Bearers about an hour ago. Farhad’s back on Earth, too. Followed my instructions to the letter and got himself caught. He’ll be handy when all this is through. Tenchi is safe and sound, though—on his way to meet you.”
You are our greatest treasure, Valentinian. It’s by the grace of God you’re on our side, and not our Father’s.
“By the grace of your wisdom, maybe. That coot is so busy being clever with his thoughtforms and elaborate tortures that he couldn’t learn a True Word if you taught him in a dream.” As Lazarus entered the room without a knock and strode to shake his hand, the magician turned to greet him. “You ready for the final act, old man?”
“I wish you could find some way to keep it from coming to this.”
“Ah, hell, you know it’s nothing to be worried about. Your service is crucial! You’re like the sexy lady of my magic show’s finale.” While the old mystic rolled his eyes at the laughing saint, Valentinian went on. “Or a volunteer from the audience, if you’d prefer.”
“I would much prefer that.”
“I just mean to say, your part—”
“I get it. What do I look like, Dominia? I don’t need a pep talk. I know why I’m here. Just change out the fucking blood, already.”
With a chuckle, Valentinian tapped Lazarus in the center of the forehead. The mystic collapsed on the spot and the Bearers cried out as if the Lady, Herself, had fallen to the floor. While they rushed to his side, Lazarus came to with a series of derisive waves. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t worry about me, don’t.”
“Yeah, and don’t injure him, either. Treat him like he’s made of paper. Once somebody sees him bleed in this state, the jig is up.”
Will you stay and help us fight?
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” promised the magician. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had an opportunity to show somebody my true face. I’m just sad you won’t be there to see the way a human brain reacts!”
Near omnipotent though she was, the Lady was relieved to hear he intended to help thin the library’s assailants. The truth was that once hostile forces poured into the breach, no options would remain but direct conflict. The (now closer to seventy) humans who had stood their ground for almost two weeks, who had watched their supplies dwindle to nothing and their hopes dash along with them, would very soon lose their lives. Some would survive to surrender, but most could not stand to be so disgraced and would fight to the death for their honor. The Bearers would fight to the bitter end, much as the Lady wished it otherwise. But their role upon the Earth would be settled once the goddess departed it—and she would be departing it not terribly long after Jerusalem’s fall.
Therefore, when the north wing of the library was secured, and two Bearers died, the Lady felt the jerks of their spirits like hooks removed from that weaving of space-time, and mourned in perfect, still silence. As the Hierophant’s troops swept through the great series of halls—slightly modified over the previous year to confuse any intelligence from the prior iteration, as usual—dear, naïve Theodore was brought into the room by the two beautiful Bearers who had been attending to him. Their faces, grim masques heavy with their sisters’ deaths, were ill-suited for Teddy’s sparkling, wild eyes.
“What a place! I’m telling you— Oh, Valentinian! There you are. Ha ha, I thought you’d zipped off with that Japanese fellow!”
Never can hold his sacrament, observed the Lady, Miki’s old body quirking its lips into a paralytic smirk. Hello, Theo.
The cheery man turned to face the goddess with pupils blown big with lysergic acid—administered to prepare him for the coming moments, for otherwise his mind would have no lubricant to cope. Like the chorus of a song he didn’t know he sang, the Governor repeated that question Dominia had so many times during the final year and a half of her life. “Do I know you?”
You will recognize us soon. One of us, at any rate. And when you do—
Gunfire burst through a nearby hall and was returned while Teddy winced. “Are we just going to sit here? We can just evacuate to that other place, can’t we?”
Your most important duty lies in Elsinore. Your charge—Lavinia needs you.
As Theodore glanced the way of the magician, who had disappeared to meet at least one of the squads approaching through the maze of halls, shelves, and multilevel mezzanines, the former doctor turned back to the Lady with real concern in his eyes. “I see,” he said, and then, in an acid-deep tone, “I see. You’re the Lady, aren’t you?”
We are the wisdom hidden by your Father for centuries, until now. As a collection of screams arose to quick abortion, the Governor was grabbed by one of the Bearers to ensure he wouldn’t dart off like a startled cat. Another team cleared the hallway directly outside the Lady’s room, and could be heard calling commands back and forth. From the slightly elevated platform where the avatar knelt, the goddess’s eyes raked in the direction of a freehanded Bearer, then nodded to the door. Farhad had surrendered out of the jet so they would understand his value and would not fail to claim him. Watching assailants had then been treated to a very visible demonstration of the martyr saint and his first mate tossing the Governor of the Front out of the other side of the object, into the breach its crash had caused, and the waiting arms of the Bearers below. This apparent intercession of Valentinian’s on the defenders’ behalf had been the true reason for retreat: white terror would stab the hearts of even the bravest men if they saw their spirit of death delivering into enemy hands that very hostage who had started the battle.
But, omens went both ways. The Hierophant, on hearing of this, had sent his reinterpretation: the gracious Saint Valentinian had placed the Governor where he could be found. By sheer miracle, the man feared lost over the Atlantic had been returned to life. Obviously, once the extraction teams reclaimed him, Theodore del Medico would be canonized. Wouldn’t it be delightful to go down in history as the soldier who rescued a true saint?
Thus, the Lady and her companions found themselves in the besieged library. Lazarus, still disoriented from the magician’s monkeying with his bodily fluids, rubbed his forehead and eventually succumbed to sink against the nearby shelves with a wave of his hand and the assurance of Teddy’s Bearer that he was fine; the other, to whom the Lady had indicated, strode to the chamber’s double doors. Much as Dominia had in that hospital so long ago, the Bearer threw the entry open before the wood could be blown from its hinges—but now, the onslaught of men into the room did not hesitate, more organized, officious, and clamorous than even those Hunters had been during the Cairo transference ceremony. As laser sights were waved around, orders were issued for hands to be put in the air. Wryly, Lazarus lifted one of his exhausted ones, and said, “I’ll be able to lift the other in about five minutes of recovery,” while a gun was shoved in his face.
The Lady continued speaking to Theodore as if a fly had buzzed between them. For two thousand years and
centuries longer, our power has been hidden from mortal men. That is why, Theodore, we have brought you here before seeing to your safe return home.
“Get your hands up,” an ape screamed of the Lady. One of several who aimed their sights upon her.
Therefore—
The power died in the room—along with the air-conditioning, the distant buzz of charging e-readers, and an undetectable background of electronic noise—for the two heartbeats it took the Lady to reappear, standing, in the doorway behind the infiltration team.
—it is imperative that you pay attention.
Amid the phantom beat of suzu bells, Miki’s body took a step forward. The body she left behind, Trisha, stepped right and revealed the madwoman. While the stupider of the confused military men knew little else to do than bark orders, a few others lowered their guns in confusion and terror while the madwoman stepped left to unveil the Adena teacher; as this spirit stepped back to release the avatar called Ishtar, as shot was fired. It penetrated the forehead of Miki’s body and the shooter dropped dead, bleeding from a bullet wound between the eyes.
As the expression goes, all hell broke loose. While, step by step, the goddess unfolded like a humanoid lotus around the long-hidden body of the true Lady, those already unfurled petals leapt into the fray, claiming weapons or speaking their own into existence. Each fought as if the General herself still dwelled within their body, and indeed, they could no longer be said to be separate from her in any way. Even once they physically stood, eight bodies in the same room, they moved with the kind of unity a military team could only dream about.
From the corner of the room, Theodore cried out and leaned around the Hierophant soldiers who had found, freed, and encircled him. “Is that Dominia,” the man screamed.