He points with his spear to the tides around the boat and with all logic says they are not high enough yet to float the boat. Someone needs to stall the Reindeer warriors long enough so we can escape. And with revenge and love in mind, my tetched husband leaves, heading to his death.
I watch him march towards the giants. Fearless, or just plain stubborn? For fifteen cycles, he has dreamed of this day, planned for this day, prepared for this day, sparred spears with Ki when she was old enough. And now this day has arrived.
The anger of the clouds is in full bloom as the rain falls, pelting our garments, pelting our faces. And through the darkness, I can just see the outline of his face. A face that I could not forget, not even with the love of my beloved savior, I could not forget. For this face has haunted me in my nightmares as he taunted me. The face of the man who raped me. Who raped Illyana. Tureal.
*
And there Orzu stands, defiantly in the way of the giant killer who killed his grandfather, destroyed his sister, and mercilessly defiled his wife. He is no longer the boy who could not kill the rabbit. He is a man who has trained and trained to one day kill a giant as he did the boar. He stands without fear, no fear of death.
But inside, he has the dread of fifteen cycles of living with his moment of failure. That microsecond where he could not overcome his ethical limit. That microsecond where his failure led to the death of his Parcza, his revered grandfather who taught him all. That microsecond where his failure led to his sister’s life in torment. And he has sworn never to have that microsecond again as he visualized, every day of his life since then, the mortal goring of Tureal. And the anger of the black clouds reflects this blackness, this inner anger that has now found its moment. The moment he is no longer a loser, a failure.
He stands as he did fifteen sun cycles ago, long limbs and giant hands protruding from under his feathered cape, and dark piercing eyes peering out from under the large bird headdress. In a deep, booming voice, Tureal speaks.
“I know you, boy. You killed my favorite slave, the girl you had not the courage to kill before I had my pleasures with her little body. And now I have come to take your daughter. Your penance for killing my slave. An eye for an eye. A girl for a girl.”
And to the giant’s left is a boy, a boy giant still much larger and taller than Orzu, dressed in the same bird clothing of his father. The boy speaks. “So you are the killer of my mother. You killed her as she weaned me. How savage are you slaves that you would kill a boy’s mother while she still weans him? How angry the gods are with you for violating the moral ethics that bind us all. Including you slaves.” He scans behind Orzu, looking for the flesh of the slave who will soon become his pleasure toy.
On the boat, the children have come forward to see what is happening, much to Nanshe’s angst. She pushes their heads below the forward strake of their boat. The giant boy points to Sama, who is standing with the wind blowing her hair and meager clothes, exposing her bare face, arms, upper chest. He says she is his as his erection pushes his loincloth aside. Her husband, Narn, seeing the imminent threat to his bride, leaps down the planks with spear in hand, ready to defend his family.
Tureal, seeing these little animals futilely charging, says to his son, “It is time to show you are a man. To take what is yours by right of the stars. Secure these males and partake in each and every one of their women as your pounding member pleases.”
And with his father’s challenge to prove his worthiness, Doroda moves forward, towards the two puny males bandying their sticks as if he could be even touched. They poke at him in vain as he swats their spears aside as if they were mere thorny branches of a sapling tree. Tiring of this game, he butts with the blunt end of his spear at the one called Narn, striking him in his thigh with enough force to make him crumple. Part of being a warrior is not to kill the males so they can be taken back as slaves for building the pyramids. He approaches the other, who vainly tries to defend the one on the ground, and grabs his spear out of his hands, throwing it back towards their boat. He picks this puny animal up and tosses him towards the boat like a small stone.
Nanshe closes her eyes in prayer. She is watching her dearest two men losing a fight that cannot be won. Tureal picks up Narn and carries him towards Orzu like a dead animal as his son comes forward to collect his female prizes. She prays, as in her life this is the only path to salvation. And before she can react, Sama is running down the ramp to get Orzu’s spear and defend her husband.
Sama tries to throw the spear at Tureal, but it only tumbles feebly in the air and falls, not even reaching his feet. Tureal drops her husband as he recognizes her. “You. You are my family’s property. You escaped from my cousin. And my, how you were expecting me today, as you have dressed so provocatively to elicit my lust. I will have you here and now.”
In horror, Sama realizes the numerous errors she has made today, but too late, as this giant, who she now remembers in deep anguish from his past violations of her body, picks her up, strips off her lower garments and sniffs her loins. She screams as she swings upside down, her face being pummeled by his aroused, reddened, angry member.
But suddenly, she tumbles to the ground as her giant assailant falls. Orzu, having thrust his spear into the center of the giant’s loins, yells, “That is for Illyana. That is what she would have wanted to do to you herself.”
And then Orzu crumples to the ground as Tureal’s son, Illyana’s son, Orzu’s nephew, slices his back.
Doroda lifts the bleeding Orzu over his head and tosses him towards the boat, towards the object, where he lands with a dead man’s thud. Helping his bleeding father stand, Tureal limps to finish off the stricken Orzu, while Doroda grabs the near-naked Sama woman to have his pleasure in front of her husband.
Towering over him, the giant who killed his closest relatives holds a spear to the heavens as Orzu can only see the angry rain pummeling his eyes. And as Orzu tries to roll, the giant spear comes down, piercing his thigh next to his groin. An eye for an eye. A groin for a groin, missed. Enraged, with the blood running down from the deep cut in his giant loins, Tureal steps on the puny man and raises his spear again, not to miss this time, as Nanshe closes her eyes and prays, for she cannot watch her savior’s horrible mutilation and prolonged death.
Flash-boom.
Stunned and blinded, Tureal is thrown off balance from the lightning strike on the object and staggers back.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Two arrows from Ki’s bow strike his head, one a direct hit in the eye, and his facial bones crack. Whoosh. A third arrow hits him in the gut and he falls to his knees in front of Orzu. If it is to be this giant’s last act on this earth, he is going to kill this puny man, the man who killed his slave. Still blinded, he feels for where the puny corpse-to-be is, takes his knife, and raises it over his head to plunge into the destitute animal’s chest.
Crunch. Through his neck crashes Nanshe’s harpoon as she drives it with all of her might and twists it. She is consumed with blackness and anger, as if the black clouds and angry sky were created from deep within that dark place in her soul. She has not had the time or the mind to reflect upon the significance of the distinct change in her essence, where not long before she basked in the peaceful existence of beauty, harmony, and love. For she is the epitome of dark and cold anger, fury, rage. She pulls the harpoon out of his neck, with the red essence of his mortal life covering her garments and running down to her feet.
As her former tormentor, the grotesque hulk who haunts her precious husband’s dreams, the evil one who stole her virgin innocence, that essence she wanted to save for her husband, rolls to the ground, she raises her harpoon and drives it into his organ of her torture, her torment, over and over and over again, until nothing, but nothing is recognizable.
Covered in his blood, his tissue, his organs, she yells, “That is for me. That is for me,” as she falls to her knees, crying into her bloody hands. And Nanshe becomes the first woman, the first human, to kill one of these monstrous heathens who
descended from the abominable rape of her female ancestors by the denizens of the stars, sons of gods.
Having been perversely occupied by violating the animal woman they called Sama, Doroda finally notices the death of his father and runs to avenge it. He picks up the woman who has ruthlessly mutilated the loins of his patriarch and tosses her as hard and as far as he can. She lands twisted and crumpled, screaming in agony, as she should in his mind. And then there is the prick of the point of a weapon at his throat.
Seeing what his beloved mate has done to avenge herself, Orzu has found the inner strength to stand despite his wounds and take her harpoon to this giant boy’s jugular, pressing hard enough to ensure that the boy’s slightest move will rip his artery open and send his vital fluids spurting into the dark, cold rain.
Nanshe sits up on the ground, unable to stand on her mangled ankle. “Kill him, Orzu. Kill him,” she shouts. “You must. Save Ki. Kill him.”
And as Orzu puts a little more pressure on the harpoon, slicing just a bit of the boy’s throat, he sees Illyana’s face in this boy. He cannot kill him. He is Illyana’s son. He has her face. He cannot kill the son of his beloved sister. And he yells, “Nanshe. I love you. I love you so much. I love you so. You must leave now.”
Doroda stares into his uncle’s eyes with the eyes of Illyana. No fear, no terror, just the look of her son. And as Orzu tries to find the courage to rip out the throat of this giant, the evil one who lusted for the rape of his daughter Ki, his mind echoes, “You cannot. You cannot kill Illyana’s son. Your nephew.”
As Nanshe yells for him to kill the giant boy, Orzu puts down the harpoon and kneels in front of the image of Illyana.
This makes no sense to Doroda, but he seizes this opportunity and draws his knife, holding it to the throat of this puny man, the frail, failed brother of his mother, the slayer of his mother, the father of his new pleasure slave. And as he starts to slice, three piercing blows hammer his left pecs. He doubles over and sees the girl he came to dominate and violate running at him, dropping her bow.
Ki, having learned from her mother of Illyana’s inability to fell her tormentor, leaped from the boat and shot the boy who was about to kill her father, with three shots made in rapid succession as she was running. She picks up her mother’s harpoon, takes the scarf off her head to show her face to this boy, the last face, the last virgin this boy will ever see, and stabs him repeatedly around the groin as he rolls to try to dodge her assaults. “That is for my mother. That is for my aunt. That is for my grandmother. And that is for my great-grandmother.” And as he tries to scoot back away from her, she runs the harpoon into his shoulder, through and through, pinning him to the long, large piece of driftwood he has backed himself up against.
She leans down to her father and holds him tightly. Covered in his blood and the splatters of the giant boy, she says to him, “Father, I love you. Father, you have taught me well. You have nothing to fear for my life. You have given me power over my life. I will be no man’s slave. I will be no giant’s slave, ever.”
The dead and the wounded litter the beach. Brimming with the blackness and anger, as does the darkness within Nanshe, the skies continue to cry on the casualties, the stricken and the cursed from old blood spilled, blood that can never be brought back. And as the dark and angry waves sweep over her, Nanshe finds she cannot find redemption in the abyss, the blackness, the blindness, the malignance of her actions. She prays to her god for forgiveness as she comes to understand the lack of restitution, the lack of fulfillment of her acts.
The angry waves start to lick Orzu’s legs as his dearest daughter holds him. As a battered, lame Narn helps his assailed, beaten, and crying Sama to the boat, An has his mother’s arm around him, supporting her as she limps in great pain across the beach.
And the dying Orzu looks into his daughter’s eyes, sees the soul of his Illyana, and says, “Leave me. You must take the object away from here, away from the tail of the bird star, or all is doomed.”
Chapter 19
Love knows no reason, no boundaries, no distance. It has a sole intention of bringing people together to a time called forever.
—Unknown
4:30 p.m. GMT+1, May 15, 2021
MoxWorld EU Headquarters, Luxembourg
She gasps. Looking back up to Peter, Mei violently shakes her head, and then stares vacantly at Alexander and shakes all over. Inside her box? A tube of personal lubricant. Scented, of course. He has degraded her from one of his leading executives into a mere piece of flesh to be used at his whim—the monster who had only two uses for women.
Zara, on the other hand, hisses, staring at what is in her box. The pistol from that night on his yacht. A MoxDefense Industries upgrade of the Russian silenced version of the Makarov, the PB—standard issue for the famed KGB. Next to it lies the crimson sash he wore, she wore. How perverse, how bent is this man. She has not used a gun, nor any deadly weapon, since that night. She has been the woman of peace she had sought to be ever since.
She holds the neatly folded crimson cloth, once around her head, her inspiration to seek herself, to change, to go back home, to be herself once again. If only she had been more moderated and replied that she cared about him, maybe Abram might be alive today. She killed him, her arrogance killed him. Sasha may have pulled the trigger, but his heart was mortally pierced by the way she rejected him. And why did he put these in front of her now? To torment her with her past? To show her she has not changed substantially since then? And now, what does he expect her to do?
A wave overcomes her, hot, heavy, and dark. She glares at her Sasha, slapping a magazine into the PB and taking aim. “I am going to put a hole in your head.” And they stare at each other until…pop.
And Alexander stands firm, not yielding, not flinching, not even blinking. And there is no crimson either. He laughs and says, “Welcome back, Zara. I knew you could not hide in your sorrows forever. What was that? All of a few seconds for your true self to reemerge and take your best shot at your dear old Sasha? I knew you could not tame the Zara I love so much. That is why that magazine is full of blanks.”
That monster. He baited her. Fooled her. And the evil djinn was let out of the deepest, darkest prison within her soul. There would be no hope for her now. Her babies would become orphans again before this was over.
“In the bottom of the box, there is another magazine,” says her sinistral Sasha. “Those are neurotoxin-dipped hollow points. Made to inflect mutilating mortal wounds of the worst kind. Excruciating pain from eviscerated flesh, accompanied by a loss of one’s ability to breathe. This time, you cannot just wing him and he lives.”
Already traumatized by the sight of a gun, Peter’s heart rate jumps beyond three hundred. And that man called me son earlier today? Who was the he Alexander was referring to. Peter wouldn’t wish such a death on anyone, but he hoped he was not that he.
“Jean-Paul, would you join me?” asks Alexander as he rises to exit the room. “I will leave you three to discuss your options.”
He glances at the disheartened Mei. “Trust me, my dear. To get what you have asked of me, before it is too late, what the ancients did to find the truth of the object must be performed here. As I have said from the beginning, I know what Peter needs. You must disrobe.” And they leave.
After moments of silence, Peter says, “I’m so sorry. I fell into his trap. I was sure that the dragon box was supposed to be for Mei, so I gave it to Zara.”
“And so, you would rather have me use that tube. How kind of you,” Zara admonishes, taking the second magazine out of the box.
“No, no. I mean, you are a very alluring woman. Hauntingly so. But a very alluring woman who seems to know what to do with a gun. Perhaps we would fare better if Mei had the gun. She doesn’t look like the kind of person who can shoot,” says a petrified Peter, staring at the stark black steel in her hand. The same color as that in his father’s hand. The same color coming from his mouth as the scarf she held. Was it always his d
estiny to die like his father, but at the hands of that dark-haired woman in his dreams?
Seeing Mei sniffle, Zara puts the gun down. “Perhaps this is for the best anyway. Mei already had sex with you on the plane. Alexander is only asking for you to repeat what you have already done. Only in public. Then no one will have to be shot today.”
Mei finally crumples, a raging stream of tears soaking her all-but-too-revealing vicuna dress. Peter comes to her side and hugs her. “It’ll be all right, Mei. I won’t look.”
“You don’t understand. Neither of you,” she cries. “Nothing happened that night, Peter. Nothing. I mean, I did obtain genetic material from you, but nothing else happened between us.”
“Genetic material?” he exclaims. “What does that mean?” He looks down at his crotch.
“It means that if you two don’t consummate a man-and-woman relationship and cough up the location of the object, Alexander is going to conclude that Peter is of no use to him,” Zara states. “Mei, he will kill Peter to ensure none of his adversaries can access his genetic material.”
Wrapping the crimson scarf around her hand, she adds, “This is not the first time he has done this.”
He leans into Mei’s ear and says softly, “Remember your moans when I rubbed your feet?”
Confused, she nods. “Good,” he says. Then he whispers into her ear.
Mei nods, rips open Peter’s shirt, and plants deep crimson kiss marks all over his chest, neck, then mouth. Zara concludes Alexander has won again. Two more poor souls he has coerced into breaking their ethical boundaries.
“Zara, could you please give us some privacy,” says Mei, “And Peter, this is what I need you to do. First, we need some water…”
The Matriarch Matrix Page 23