Chapter 8
“The Goddess of Death”
The Bleak Mountains were gray, barren and rocky under a dark, rumbling and flashing sky. Hundreds of thousands of clone women and thousands of their bipedal main battle tanks marched through the steep, winding valleys to the south. Locust-type attack entomopters buzzed overhead.
Wavering beams and electromagnetic pulse waves suddenly shot from below and blasted the aircraft out of the sky! Hidden neural disruptors activated, causing women to wince as if stung and drop en masse. Wavering beams streamed and tore into columns of battle tanks and blasted the vehicles into flaming chunks! Snipers above picked off women below. Virgin Soldiers fled to the cover of rocks… only to be snatched by awaiting tentacles!
The polymorph that was once Ingrid Purple the Apt was now Ingridax the Wily. Her raspy voice reported, “Our enemies to the south shall not be coming.”
Brendaxa the Insidious hoped, “They are slain to the last?”
“Yes and no: hundreds of them are now living dead. Shall I send them to you?”
“Yes. Shall you be ready for our enemies to the east?”
The voice snickered. It assured, “We shall be ready.”
“Well done, my sister! You serve our mistress well.”
The Army of Four, Drusilla, a Keeper and a dozen Sentinels followed a Scout up the mountain on their way to the Castle of Yississ. A robot striding on four spindly, nimble legs followed after the advancing party. The machine was laden with supplies and controlled by the group’s Girl in Blue.
The Concubine Scout found a spot among boulders. Everyone nestled there and made camp. Adam drank from his flask. He peered down at the battle raging below. He worried, “I hope we didn’t leave them in a rut.”
The man shared his flask with Drusilla. The woman assured him, “They have captured supplies and heavy weapons and are holding good ground.”
It would be two more days before the main body of ground forces reached the basecamp of the monsters. Adam hoped everyone would survive long enough to be relieved. Not wanting Drusilla to worry, he assured her, “The best of our best are down there.”
“No, Adam. We are the best of our best.”
The man nodded.
The Gentle Desert and its Bleak Mountains were always dark yet it was getting darker. Drusilla commanded her Sentinels, “Margo and Wendy, you take first watch. Everyone else go to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the Virgin Soldiers responded.
Adam told Drusilla, “Not to disparage your army, but you girls are usually wimps. All of you have been kicking ass.”
“As I have told you: our best Scouts and Sentinels were selected for the air assault. Those in my presence are the best of these best.”
“Hey, the quality shows.”
The dark, rumbling, flashing sky seemed so near here on the slope of the highest mountain. The Everlasting Storm was a tempest yet is was somehow… tranquil. Adam soon fell fast asleep.
Concubines and Tellurians had reached the basecamp and could not be dislodged. More were coming. The women coming from the south had been destroyed or turned into zombies. Ingridax the Wily was lying in wait for the women and Tellurians coming from the east. Where was the Army of Four? “They come to me,” Yississ answered the question of Brendaxa. “I have foreseen their coming. I await it.”
Yellow zombies that were once Concubine Sentinels guarded the peak where sat the Castle of Yississ. The undead women stood at their posts vigilant and unflinching… until snatched or pounced! “Too easy,” Flora smirked.
“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
Drusilla pointed up at the metal edifice, informing, “The systems ventilation ducts are our best way in.”
“What’s the catch?”
“It is dangerous. A venting would blast and cook anyone in the ducts.”
The Concubine Keeper of the group assured, “The upper left primary vent should be safe unless they initiate the super weapon. Even then, we’d have several minutes before a vent.”
“Several minutes?” Adam cringed.
The party climbed up to the upper left primary vent and made their way through the ducts. They came out finding themselves in a large chamber full of humming machinery. Zombie Sentinels guarded the floor and network of catwalks. Zombie Keepers manned consoles or tended to machinery. The intruders crept about, snatching and subduing the undead women.
“Is this the generator for the super weapon?” Adam hoped.
“The super weapon is primed via the communications and teleportation system,” the group’s Girl in Blue corrected. “The Everlasting Storm actually powers the weapon. This is one of three kinetic shield generators.”
“Then why did we make that turn? Why didn’t we go straight on to the super weapon?”
The Keeper giggled. Adam knew the little twerp was rolling her eyes behind those black goggles of hers. He would not ask her why. Drusilla whispered to him, “Crawling into the reaction chamber of the main reactor would fry us. We came out the nearest maintenance hatch.”
“Oh.”
The group ventured deeper into the fortress. More zombie Sentinels were snatched and subdued, either by arms and hands or by vines. “This is still too easy,” Adam fretted.
The Scout took point and led the way. Adam and Drusilla followed close behind her. Hairy was at the rear, his large gun always at the ready. The sasquatch suddenly heard the soft patter of many running bare feet. He poked around a corner and blazed away! A throng of zombie Sentinels winced and dropped as a stream of plasma bolts burned through them! More were pouring into every other corridor! The intruders blasted the sudden waves of attackers! Zombie Sentinels dropped yet more kept coming! Eventually: the last of the assailants dropped to her knees then onto her face. The corridors were carpeted with the bodies of women who were already dead. A cackle suddenly resonated throughout the area. The voice of Yississ rasped, “I have more. I always have more. Alas, I am the Goddess of Death.”
Adam warned, “She’s having fun so expect the worst.”
In the valleys and gorges to the east: hundreds of plant fairies, thousands of goblins and sasquatches and hundreds of thousands of clone women were under attack! The Tellurians swiftly disappeared among the rocks and ridges. Beams blasted bipedal battle tanks and Girls in Red winced and dropped en masse. Snipers peppered the frantic crowds. The Concubines feared they were abandoned… until they glimpsed fighting along the cliffs and slopes. Scouts and Sentinels found their courage and thronged their way up to the fray!
Adam, Drusilla and their party found themselves wandering in circles. The man worried, “Does your Scout know where she’s going?”
“Yes. She was briefed on the design plans for this class of edifice.”
The Girl in Blue behind them was waving a handheld analyzer. She whispered to Drusilla, “Ma’am, everyone but King Adam is showing faint signs of enchantment. We may be experiencing sensory manipulation.”
“Adam is as lost as the rest of us.”
“Ma’am, he’s just following our Scout with the rest of us.”
Adam noticed that his beloved carnivorous plant fairy was missing. He worried, “Where’s Flora?”
Flora was lost in the corridors of the enemy fortress. She heard a cackle, then a raspy voice utter, “Debrax, my child, I am impressed. Your sister proves wise to have chosen you for this task.”
“Thank you, milady.”
“Reveal us.” Flora suddenly found herself alone in a room surrounded by six polymorphs and the demon Yississ! The monsters were “women” wearing green body shirts and standing on clusters of tentacles. The demon was a naked, rotting, towering “woman” with six breasts. “I disgust you?” Yississ sneered at Flora. “Your beauty shall be my own.”
“No.”
The demon loomed closer. The fairy cringed! Yississ boasted, “The ancients of Golgoth feared me as you do. They adored me for it. They built temples in my name and shed their own
blood for my favor. I live in the flesh and by the blood of their wisest woman. Alas, a human life cannot endure. Inhuman fairy and terrible huntress, I shall live forever by your eternal flesh and blood.”
“You shall not!” Flora cried. She lashed out as whipping vines!
Yississ cackled, snatching the appendages as mighty tentacles. “Fight!” the demon mocked. “Squirm that I may relish your touch!” Yississ shrieked with laughter! Her voice lost its stolen humanity when it snarled and rumbled, “You are but a fairy. I am the Goddess of Death!”
Adam was stricken with sickening dread. He barked, “Hairy! Conjure! Follow Drusilla’s orders! Don’t wait for me. Don’t look for me. Don’t look back and blast this place to hell.”
Drusilla chased after Adam, telling him, “Our mission is more important than one person.”
“Yeah, I know: that’s why I don’t want you to wait for me.”
“Adam!” the woman grabbed him. “We need you!”
“No you don’t. Flora does.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No!”
“Yes,” the woman insisted. “You’re too important to be sacrificed.”
“Thanks for caring.”
The Concubine Priestess commanded one of her Sentinels, “Margo Red, you are in command. Mind our top priority. See to the destruction of the super weapon.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Adam told Hairy and Conjure, “Follow her orders.” The addressed nodded.
The King of Telluria and the Concubine Priestess then hurriedly disappeared together around a corner.
Flora was thrice as strong as her strongest carnivorous kin… but weak against this festering demon! The middle of the tentacles that were Yississ suddenly opened as a gaping maw lined with sharp, yellow teeth! The monstrous thing snapped at the struggling fairy! Flora screamed!
“This way,” Drusilla ran in the direction of the shrill cry.
“Obviously,” Adam followed after her. “Get behind me,” he urged… but Drusilla ignored him. “Hey!” the man snatched the woman’s shoulder. She pulled away from him and pouted. Adam told her, “You follow my lead. Got it?” Drusilla nodded. She allowed Adam to take the lead.
The six Girls in Green polymorphs were armed with minicarbines and hiding in plain sight. They awaited Adam and Drusilla. “Kill them,” Yississ commanded. “I have no use for them.”
Adam ran into something, tackling whatever it was to the floor. Tentacles suddenly whipped around him and a gun poked into his ribs! The man was faster, reflexively grabbing the polymorph by her head and snapping her face past its shoulder. The monster convulsed and her tentacles loosened.
Drusilla dove aside and rolled back onto her feet as writhing tentacles snatched at her! She zipped a bolt into a monster’s face, blasting brains out its human head! The other monsters crawled and slithered towards her, raising minicarbines! Drusilla darted behind cover, barely avoiding the sudden volley of plasma bolts.
Adam pounced from behind, pressing a polymorph to the floor. He snapped the monster’s neck. The remaining three turned to face him. Drusilla blasted one of them from behind! Adam raised his own weapon and blasted the other two.
The man and woman panted, six polymorphic monsters sprawled at their feet. “Worse than the zombies,” Adam remarked.
“In every way,” Drusilla agreed.
The man and woman resumed their search for the imperiled plant fairy.
Flora pulled and writhed. The long, red tongue of amorphous Yississ licked her. The demon’s maw kept snapping at her… until shots were fired and the gaping mouth wailed! The tentacles of Yississ dropped the vines of Flora and lashed out at new arrivals. Adam and Drusilla dodged the thrashing and whipping tentacles, the humans zipping bolts into the shapeless monstrosity. The amorphous abomination scurried away. Its mind cried out as loudly as if a voice shouting, “My children, our enemies assail me! Help me! Come to me now!”
Zombies and polymorphs throughout the station abandoned their posts as they rushed to the urgent defense of their mistress.
Adam and Drusilla kept after Yississ, pelting her shapeless mass with hot bolts of ionized gas. Monsters suddenly poured into every corridor around them! The man and woman blazed away as throngs of attackers converged upon them.
Conjure and the others watched as a polymorph and the zombies guarding Primary Engineering hurriedly abandoned their post. The half-goblin looked up at Hairy, saying only, “Adam.” The sasquatch rumbled a chuckle. The intruders reached their objective uncontested.
Adam cycled charges and kept shooting as Drusilla darted up the winding stairwell behind him. The man followed her up… when tripped. He blasted the ensnaring tentacle and scurried upwards. The monsters below did not pursue.
Adam and Drusilla entered a corridor on the level above. The man slid against the wall and sat on the floor. He aimed at the opening to the stairwell, ready to shoot anything that dared to come up.
“Margo Red reporting, over,” Drusilla heard the voice of her sister.
The Concubine Priestess touched the side of her goggles-communicator, responding, “Report, Margo Red.”
“We have secured Primary Engineering and are planting the bombs. We shall await your order to detonate.”
Margo Red was the consummate Concubine Sentinel: ready to die following orders she never questioned. Drusilla knew her sisters in red well enough to know Margo was willing to stay with the bombs to ensure their detonation. Unless commanded to leave, the Sentinel would most likely stay to her own death. Drusilla ordered Margo, “Escape the facility. Should I not give the order within twenty minutes, detonate.”
“Yes, ma’am. Understood.”
Adam grinned, “Twenty minutes? We’ll need longer than that to find our way out.”
“I know where we are,” Drusilla assured. “Follow me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the man saluted.
Brendaxa the Insidious remained in the command-and-control room. Her orders from Yississ were, “You, my general, shall wage my war. Win this battle. Do nothing else lest I call upon you by name.”
The enemy below had neutralized a third of the basecamp’s kinetic shield generators and secured others for their own use. The forces marching from the east were fighting through Ingridax’s defenses. A thousand Tellurians and a hundred thousand Virgin Soldiers marching from the north were still coming. Brendaxa wanted to inform her mistress that the situation was dire. She wanted to suggest that the army flee to the west and scatter among the mountains. Alas, Brendaxa would follow her orders not to disturb her mistress.
“Adam,” the unheard voice of Flora called to him. “I have joined the others. Hairy and I shall come to you.”
“We’re leaving,” the man’s thoughts responded aloud. “Get out of here.”
“Yes, my king.”
Adam suddenly fell through the floor! The hand of a rotting arm snatched him by the throat and hoisted him up off the floor! He heard the mind of Yississ command her monsters, “Keep the woman away but do not slay her, not yet.” Adam raised his gun and blasted Yississ right in the face! She wailed and dropped him! Adam kept shooting when a tentacle suddenly whipped out and smacked his gun sliding across the floor! The minicarbine hissed and smoked, apparently broken. Another tentacle smacked Adam against the wall!
The naked, towering, rotting “woman” with six breasts loomed over the mortal man. Yississ rasped, “Greater kings than you offered their sons for my blessing. Your sacrifice shall be for my curse!” Adam lunged! Yississ smacked him against the wall. She cackled.
“Keep it up,” Adam encouraged. “My sacrifice will be worth it.”
“Oh? You believe we shall burn together? Mortal man, the woman of Shadow shall not destroy us quite yet. Yes, she is against us, but she believes she needs you. She believes you are required for the return of her master.”
“I buried his ass.”
“Fool! The Great Shadow is climbing his way back up! I would bury him fo
rever but you stop me! He shall return, because of you! The clone women fight alongside you for the return of the Living Darkness. Have you any doubt?” Adam knew the demon’s claim was true. He whimpered. Yississ told him, “Your woman is a slave girl of the Great Shadow, Devourer of Worlds. All that she has done for you she has done for your greatest enemy. She is against you even as she is for you.”
Adam wanted to dismiss the demon’s claims as lies… but her claims rang true. “I know she’s a Concubine of the Great Shadow,” he admitted, “but I got the chance to meet Drusilla. There’s a human being under all that indoctrination.”
“She is but one of many.”
“Yeah. Aren’t we all?”
Yississ grabbed Adam by the neck with both her large, rotting hands. She pulled him up off his feet. She glared into his bulging eyes, telling him, “I wanted you to know... before I kill you.” A gaping maw suddenly erupted from her chest and the rest of her form became writhing tentacles! The man kicked at the snapping yellow teeth and the lapping red tongue. Helpless to break free, he plunged into the large mouth.
Elsewhere and closing: Crowds of zombie Sentinels withered as Hairy blazed into them with rapid-fire streams of plasma bolts. Blood Drinkers shrieked and burned as Conjure loosed flaming arrows into their slithering throngs. Drusilla and her sisters blasted monsters as they poured into other corridors. “This way!” Flora led everyone onwards.
They found a shapeless, rotting mass sprawled on the floor. A bulge was within the mass. The Girl in Blue waved her analyzer over the thing, concluding, “It’s Adam. He’s alive.” Hairy unslung his power-pack and set down his stormgun. He lifted the dead, shapeless mass of rotting tentacles. He opened its large, slack maw. Flora reached in and pulled Adam out. The man was covered in blood and slime.
The Concubine Keeper of the group injected Adam with a stimulant. The man opened his eyes, wondering, “Did we win?”
Drusilla was leaning over him. She asked, “What happened?”
The man glanced over at the sprawled mass of rotting tentacles. He smirked, “I gave her something to choke on.”
Hairy put his power-pack back on and brandished his stormgun. He took point as Drusilla directed everyone out.
Brendaxa was still in the command-and-control room directing the battle… when a boom suddenly shook the facility and the lights and monitors went out. A zombie Keeper reported, “Our main reactor has just blown!” The doors of the elevator suddenly burst out and the room was filled with bluish white fire! Brendaxa and the zombies screamed and burned!
The escaped intruders watched from behind boulders as the Castle of Yississ erupted into a bluish white inferno! The tower that served as the conduit for the super weapon wilted and collapsed. Adam cheered, “Mission accomplished!”
Soon thereafter, the dozens of remaining dragonfly-type bombers pummeled the helpless monsters below with booming and devastating ordinance! The Army of Four and elite team of Concubines watched from the rocky slopes of the highest mountain. Adam and Conjure cheered. Hairy clapped and laughed. Flora smiled. The Concubines simply watched.
Yississ was dead and her castle and super weapon destroyed. For the next forty days, the Tellurian warriors and Virgin Soldiers scoured the Bleak Mountains hunting and destroying what few monsters managed to crawl or slither away. The Yississ War was over.
Everyone returned to Region One: the Middle Forest. Adam wanted to talk to the Oracle. He stood under the tree that was her and looked up into its leafy branches. “I have a personal question,” he began. “I’m afraid to ask it… but I really need to know.”
The leaves of the Tree of the Oracle rustled as it spoke, “I know your question, my king, but you must be a man and ask it.”
“Okay. I heard some nasty things about Drusilla and her sisters. Are they true?”
“Adam, what is true is seldom all that is true. Only all is one of everything.”
“Okay, uh, no riddles, please. I really need to know what I’m dealing with.”
The Oracle answered, “A woman of the Great Seen Unseen heeds the Unheard Whisper with no thought of her own will. A Virgin Soldier of the Great Shadow fights whatever battle she is sent into. Drusilla loves Adam.”
“She loves me?”
“Adam, is she a Concubine or a woman?”
“She’s a woman.”
“Yes, but she is also a Concubine of the Great Seen Unseen. As one of the Many of One there is no Drusilla. Only as Drusilla does she love you.” Adam sighed. “Man and woman are the one of humanity. As two they are nothing. Only as one are they meant to be.”
“What?”
“Be a man. Heed my counsel! Be a man.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Thanks,” he uttered, not sure if he meant it.
The King of Telluria signed a formal peace with the commanding general of the Concubine Expeditionary Forces. Drusilla was in her white, hooded cloak. Adam was wearing his jeans and shirt from planet Earth. Everyone was watching them as they signed the documents. The man told the woman, “Now we have to make it official.”
“We did.”
Adam shook his head, correcting, “As King of Telluria, I’ve made it the arbitrary law that no document signed is official unless sealed with a kiss.”
Drusilla smirked under the cowl of her white cloak. “Very well,” she agreed. “Let’s make it official.” The man and woman embraced. They kissed.
The Yississ War Page 8