Elysium Shining

by Terri Kraemer

  Something swept her legs. It took her a moment to realize that her mom had used a low spinning kick on her. Soror Valide had no means to keep herself from falling in the split second it took to hit the ground.

  Bon’sinne stood over her, her expression grim.

  * * *

  Zoey threw a palm strike into Buska’s face, staggering her. The other girl never relented with her laugh.

  “That’s enough,” Zoey said.

  “It’s never enough,” said Buska. “People will always break, we can always take in more people when they need us, and we can break them some more. It was a matter of time before my kindred broke the universe.”

  Buska came at Zoey with attacks of her own. She was fast and skilled, so much so that Zoey dropped the beacon from her hands so she could block and dodge, or punch, as much as she could. Zoey had to use her all of her training from the last few months to defend against every strike. She released her doubled vision to give herself a quarter of a second to react. Her opponent was as fast as Zoey was, and yet Zoey was aware of her own limits. It was a matter of time before her endurance ran out, fighting. She needed an opening, or else some strategy to beat Buska’vild.

  As they fought, both girls weaved their legs in and out of one another’s stances in multiple attempts to trip one another. Both women drew closer to the hallway door. Zoey knew this of her surroundings despite having her back turned to it. Did Bu know or care about it, or the fact that the door was ajar? Zoey decided it was a good idea to find out. Zoey feigned weakness, leaning to her left. She hoped that Buska would take the bait with either a punch or a kick. Her free hand grabbed the door handle.

  The other woman chose to go for a kick with her right. Zoey pulled back on the door with her left hand and used her right knee to bat the incoming leg toward the wall. With her weight she pushed back into the door to pin the leg, and then she spun around and thrust her elbow into Buska’s chest. The woman fell back and breathed harder than Zoey.

  “Not bad,” said Buska. “We will make you better.”

  “My answer is no,” Zoey said. “There’s something I said two months ago to the wrong woman that I say to you now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  An angry beast showed itself in front of Zoey, feral and gritting her teeth. Buska pulled something out from her backside and pressed a tiny button on the side of it. The object had looked like a knife without a blade before, but now it came to life with a laser for an edge. The beast sprang forward.

  Zoey leaned back to dodge and saw the laser edge cut a few centimeters into the door with ease. Buska flipped the knife and drove it down at her. There wasn’t enough momentum left to backflip for the good that would have done her, so Zoey crossed her wrists to block against Buska’s arm. Zoey turned herself and slipped out of the knife’s trajectory. In doing so she landed on her hands and saw that her right foot was resting between Buska’s legs.

  She kicked upward behind one of Buska’s knees, withdrew her foot, and stood quick to grab the back of the other woman’s head. Zoey pulled it forward with all of her force, slamming Buska’s face into the side of the ajar door. Buska dropped the knife, but laughed again. Before she could chance any further retaliation from Buska, Zoey swung the door open and shoved the other woman behind it. She pushed it closed, turned the lock, and darted for her things.

  Zoey grabbed her hoody and her bag with her things in it, and then she saw the transmat beacon on the floor next to Buska’s gun. Zoey had dropped the box when their bout began, but when did the other woman drop the weapon? She grabbed both items and left the classroom.

  In the distance outside there were Peacekeepers engaged in a shootout around a building of classrooms. Was running to them a good idea? Zoey didn’t know.

  Buska charged out of the exit of the neighboring classroom. A crimson line was visible from this far, running down from her nose to her lips. She gave her blood a lick, smacked her lips, and grinned at Zoey before running for her.

  The beacon in Zoey’s hand might take a while to work, and Zoey didn’t want to leave Tong-Chang behind. The gun in her hand was fast, but she had never shot anyone before. She raised the weapon and fired. Her first blast hit a tree as Buska passed it. The force of the flying splinters made the woman lose her footing for a split second; Buska kept coming. A second blast hit the ground at Buska’s feet. She screamed out and tumbled forward into the pit that Zoey had made.

  “Stay down,” Zoey said, pointing the weapon at Buska and taking a slow, wary step forward. “Just stay down.”

  “Yours is such a broken family,” Buska said. “Go ahead. Kill me. As soon as you pull that trigger, you’re as good as ours. Let my death etch scars into the navel of your spirit. Let it break down all that you think you are. You are nothing; not yet.”

  As she took more steps toward Buska, Zoey saw that the gun blast had torn apart the shoes and pant legs that Buska had been wearing, and her feet were now a bloody mess.

  “Let it weigh you down to know that either your mother will kill your sister and then herself when she learns the awful truth, or your sister will end your mother and die regardless,” Buska said. “Know that every moment of happiness you thought you had is nothing more than a lie; a dream. Finish me.”

  “Zoey!” said a man’s voice off to the side. “Put the gun down.”

  “Do it. What is family, anyways?”

  “It’s something you’ll never know,” said Zoey. “It’s what Ren’baek hoped to give you. You were never a good brother. You were the worst kind.”

  She tossed the gun to her left. Zoey had to be better than this creature before her. With a heavy sigh that she felt down deep within herself, Zoey looked to the right and saw Commander Consilius walking closer with his pistol out.

  He said, “Zoey, who is this girl, and why are you shooting at her?”

  “That thing is Buska’vild Druvvin. She went through some procedure to change her sex. But don’t you be getting any ideas. She might kill you in your sleep.”

  “But he’ll feel so good when I’m doing it to him,” Buska said. “So you’re the one, Commander Fons’benedict Consilius? Tell me, you alliance hound, how is my dear, old brother these days? Oh, that’s right!” She laughed again, her gaze fixed on Benedict.

  “Impossible,” the commander said, regarding the creature in the ground directly. “You were in that craft when it exploded. If you’re still alive, then . . . ?”

  “That old ruse! No one checked for the bodies. You better hurry, Zoi’ne, if you want to save your mom and sister from each other.”

  Then she laughed and jeered at the heavens. Zoey didn’t need some foul beast to tell her she needed to run, but running was what she did. That laughter rung inside of her mind as she moved.

  * * *

  “You can do better than this,” said Bon’sinne. “If you take off that mask of yours then maybe you’ll breathe more easily.”

  “Nice of you to care,” Soror Valide said. She used her hands to turn herself over, and followed it up by using her legs to propel her body up against her mother. Once she used the motion to lift herself into the air Soror Valide pushed herself back with a kick that Bon’sinne blocked with her arms. Soror Valide landed on her feet, and she said, “You should have shown this concern for your children; for your own daughter.”

  Soror Valide pulled out the beak in her possession. She had been able to breathe fine with the mask on. She could breathe in the aromatic substance within the addition for her mask and still be able to fight without suffocating. In using the drug, though, her mind would crack, and she wasn’t sure that teleporting in this fight was worth the risk. With a quick thrust as though she were punching the air, Soror Valide released the beak in Bon’sinne’s direction and used the simultaneous gesture to enter an attack stance in preparation for what came next. She waited for her lifelong adversary.

  Bon’sinne caught the beak. The force of its flight through the
air caused a green puff of dust to break loose of the perforated barrier within the beak’s interior. From the current distance that Soror Valide stood from her mother it was hard to tell how much, if any, of the dust had been inhaled in the few seconds it took to dissipate. Tossing the beak was a gamble to see if the older woman would be affected by the nameless drug.

  Brothers and sisters of the Hulda’fi referred to it as a taste of divinity.

  Soror Valide sprang forward once the dust had scattered and settled. She moved faster than she had against any one, real opponent. Her arms were weightless hammers. She could do this. She had to do this. She had to prove this possibility to herself for once in her life.

  Her mother matched her speed with every blow. However, Bon’sinne was using a breathing technique to prolong endurance. She was exerting herself in this fight. She was prolonging her endurance, and Soror Valide knew it. The two of them went for the same palm strike and joined hands, clutching one another by closing their fingers. Soror Valide gazed deep into her mother’s eyes, and her mother into the yellow eyes of her mask.

  “What would you know of my children?” Bon’sinne asked.

  “More than you ever have,” said Soror Valide.

  “I raised two of them from birth.”

  “And look how well I turned out!”

  “What?” Her eyes opened wide.

  Soror Valide pulled her mother forward with her right and punched her in the side of her ribs with her left. She moved on to the offensive; her mom had been reduced to a defensive stance that was too shocked to last. It was possible that Soror Valide had found the one weakness she was looking for, but it no longer mattered.

  Twenty revolutions of pain, fear, and anger resurfaced with every blow, and all of it threatened to explode from her chest any second. She blamed this woman for every single thing; every cut or bruise she had, every school bully she had to deal with on her own, every day that she went home with only her brother to confide in, every loss she felt, and the time, that one time, when her mother was so close to her but did nothing to save Il’lyse. She tripped her mother, who tried to regain her footing, and Il’lyse yelled as she tackled her. They were on the ground. She wanted to tell off the woman beneath her for every bad memory she had, for every memory she never got to have, but those words wouldn’t come.

  Instead she wrapped her hands around her mother’s throat and squeezed. There was something held her back, but what it was she couldn’t tell. Finally, she said, “You, why? Why couldn’t you love me?”

  Bon’sinne struggled, one hand reaching up for the mask. She said, “Y-you can’t. No.”

  [ 49]

  “No, I can’t,” she said. Il’lyse let go. Her mother gasped for air underneath her. Soror Valide wanted this, didn’t she? “I can’t. I don’t even know. What am I—?”

  She raised her hands and stared at them. They shook. She’d killed for less than this. She had killed so many. How was her mother, the woman she blamed for her troubles, so different from the sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers she had taken from Hoshi-Lacarta?

  As she stood up, another woman screamed and ran at her from the side. Her Aelf senses dilated.

  * * *

  She had never prayed before. In truth, Zoey never knew who or what to believe in, but was always quick to invoke the name she had been familiar with after so many years. Now, as she ran, she hoped that any being that existed out there could hear her thoughts. She hoped, above all, that she was not too late.

  Please don’t do this. Please don’t let them die. Let me get there on time.

  Fury rushed through her veins as Zoey drew closer to them. Zoey saw her sister with her hands on Bon’sinne’s neck. She had to save her mom. She had to take care of Il’lyse. Her sister stood. No, she couldn’t be too late.

  “Earth to Soror!” Zoey said, ramming into her.

  Once her shoulder crashed against Soror Valide’s form, she threw a single punch into her sister’s cheek. The impact threw her sister back, causing the infamous Hulda’fi to plummet.

  Zoey bent down to examine her mom. Bon’sinne coughed and breathed. Good, she was alive. “Mom, don’t scare me like that,” she said.

  Bon’sinne said, “Z-Zoey, she’s—”

  “There’s no time. Let me take care of her.” She stood up, as did her sister.

  “No, you can’t fight her. I can’t let you.”

  She was going to hate herself for this later, Zoey figured. With her thumb on the device she pressed the activation button on the beacon. As soon as she saw the first light appear upon it, she tossed it toward Bon’sinne and then faced Soror Valide.

  “Huh, what?” said Bon’sinne. “Zoey, no, you can’t!”

  The red light enveloped her, and Bon’sinne was gone. She had been teleported to safety, Zoey hoped. Zoey didn’t have to go through with being transported anywhere, but she was here, facing off against the person who had started this mad dream. Neither she nor Tong-Chang were leaving for Keft’aerak’s ship unless someone gave them another beacon. No, she wasn’t sure if she’d let anyone give her one.

  “I’m not going to let you hurt her,” said Zoey.

  “You should have left with her, then,” Soror Valide said.

  “That’s not happening.”

  “Then you’ll die.”

  Soror Valide was swift. She ran, jumped, and spun to kick Zoey. However, Zoey could see this coming, even if she had not trained to fight back. Zoey grabbed her leg before it could hit her and swung her further to the side before letting go. Her sister fell, but landed on her hands and wheeled around, allowing her to regain her footing. Soror Valide slid into another fighting pose.

  “Stop it,” Zoey said. “No more fighting.”

  “This ends when one of us dies,” Soror Valide said.

  The older sibling came at her again, but with quick jabs that Zoey could bat away with her arm. Zoey struck with an open palm to her sister’s chest and then ran forward. She used her body to push Soror Valide back against the front windows of the student lounge.

  “I don’t want you to die, Il’lyse,” said Zoey. “Your so-called brothers and sisters do. Buska told me.”

  “Liar,” Soror Valide said.

  “Your real brother wants you to come home. I want you to come home. We are your family.”

  “What do you know about family? What do you know about having a home?” Soror Valide hit Zoey with her masked forehead and then pushed Zoey off of her. She came at her with more punches and kicks.

  Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong, and Zoey tried to figure out what it was while she blocked every blow with more ease than she had anticipated. This was a woman who had beaten Zoey on more than one occasion, and the first that Zoey’d ever met who had ever beaten their mom in a fight. Why was defending against her every move as easy as it was? One feeble attack after another kept coming for Zoey until Soror Valide fell to her knees. Zoey took a step closer and reached for her, only to be met with a pathetic backhand against her arm. Zoey thrust her open hand forward for speed, but grabbed the mask without resistance. She yanked it off.

  Before her was Il’lyse, who was in tears – the sort of tears that came from a child that had been torn from all that they once knew and the shock finally wore off. “Finish me,” she said. “I’m nothing; have nothing.”

  “No,” Zoey said.

  “Zoi’ne, do it. I can’t anymore.”

  “Il’lyse.” Zoey dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around her sister. “I’m right here for you.”

  “Cold, infinite beyond, what is with you?” She leaned into Zoey and returned the embrace. “Let me hate you. Let me die. I can’t. Why can’t I?”

  Zoey had to trust that her sister wasn’t going to use this hold for an attack. No, Zoey did; she trusted her. Her sister was broken, and Zoey wasn’t going to let go until she was right again.

  Above them, a machine hummed and screeched that Zoey hadn’t seen. She was reluctant to look up to se
e what it was. When she turned her head she saw and realized

  that the sound was a stiern-boat hovering in the air and taking aim. It fired its weapons.

  * * *

  A corner of the library roof exploded. Dasos climbed the stairs with caution so he could get a look at what was happening. Through what was left of the windows below the impacted wall he could see that other blasts across the campus had occurred as well. There was a stiern-boat flying low outside. Its two cannons, one on either side behind a protective plate, took potshots in random directions while the craft itself maneuvered with an evasive pattern.