Sisters of the Sands

by Villinger, James

  “Okay,” I said, looking back at her. “But you have to promise to step down as the Queen during this … truth.”

  Antwin nodded and ambled over to me. “That was my intention.” She stood by my side and scowled down at Mira, who looked away and spat blood onto the ground.

  Most of the Nomads lowered their rifles.

  I was about to open portals throughout the city, as I did before, until Antwin raised a hand to stop me.

  “Not necessary, Sacet,” she said, reaching into her pocket and retrieving a small device. “Your portal trick was cute, but this recorder will have broadcasted our message to every electronic device on the planet before the night is over.”

  She threw the cube onto the ground in the middle of our group. Everyone backed away leaving a large circle around it. The device clicked and several green laser lines scanned all around.

  Antwin cleared her throat. “Citizens of the Female Dominion, no … citizens of the world. The attack is over and the damage is done. To you soldiers who are ready to defend our capital and my life, our true enemy has been defeated, or at least they have been this day.”

  Antwin looked down at Mira before continuing. “I am Queen Antwin, the real Antwin. And kneeling beside me is a commander I once trusted, Mira, stripped of her vanity.

  “I know you’re all confused, so allow me to explain. I succeeded the throne many cycles ago, simply because the previous Queen saw promise in me. My first decree was to increase the war effort. I believed we were not fighting hard enough, and that had to change. Those that were alive back then would remember those golden times. Our enemies truly feared us and the destruction we brought to them.”

  I could see some of the older Nomads and male Acolytes nodding their heads.

  “But, I was too effective. Hanging over my leadership, and also over the Male Dominion King, another faction secretly pulls the strings, even to this day. I do not know what they want, but they have purposely prolonged this war. My 'faithful' commander here usurped me and took control for herself. But I was still a popular ruler, and so rather than taking over with violence, she supplanted me with illusions so that no one would know the difference.

  “As for me, why they never killed me I'll never understand. They altered my face surgically so that no one would know me. They altered my memories and told me my name was Sula so that I wouldn't know myself.”

  Antwin looked over at Tau. “But thanks to the Acolyte known as Tau, you can now know my face once again.”

  She looked back at me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “And thanks to the Acolyte known as Sacet, I now know myself. These girls and all of their new friends, Nomads and even Male Dominion Acolytes, have exposed the frauds.

  “For those of you still loyal to me, your real Queen, listen to my wishes for this society. Cease this war. Throw down your weapons. Join us in a new age.”

  She glanced down at Mira again. “I understand if you still don’t trust me, for my name has been consistently besmirched by a false pretender. And that is why as my last act as the true Queen, I have chosen my successor.”

  The whole chamber was filled with murmurs, until Antwin held her hands up to silence us.

  “We should have a say in this,” Hati interrupted.

  “No,” Antwin replied. “It is the Queen’s prerogative as to who replaces her.” She took a deep breath. “And that person is … Tau.”

  “What?” Tau immediately said in shock. “Why me?”

  The entire room turned to her, stunned.

  Antwin hobbled over to her. “Because when everyone else was killing each other, you were in the hospitals and the prisons, healing the sick and wounded, both female and male. You didn’t care who it was, you just wanted to help the people.

  “I even watched as you resurrected the dead tonight, your fallen comrades stood back up and continued the fight.”

  Antwin pointed back at the throne. “The last thing our people need is another dictator, another warmonger, a tyrant like Mira and I. But you … after a lifetime of brainwashing, are still a good person. It also doesn’t hurt that this city, the entire Female Dominion loves you. People like you are exactly what our society needs right now.”

  Tau looked dumbfounded. “Uh ... um ... uh?”

  “So, will you do it? Will you become our leader?”

  Tau locked eyes with me and I nodded. She nodded back nervously. “I … I will.”

  Antwin gestured to the throne. “Then please, ascend the throne.”

  Tau glanced at the throne and then back at everyone else, as if searching for objections. Her hands shook and her knees quivered as she climbed the steps. She sat on the throne with an almost fearful look.

  “Let there be no confusion or illusion,” Antwin yelled. “Tau is your new ruler. If you are still loyal to Mira and her foolish never-ending war you are welcome to come to the Citadel and die personally by my sword.

  Antwin fell silent.

  One of the chieftains stepped forward. “So you’re saying … anyone from the desert can live in your cities? All of our families? We won’t be hunted anymore?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Antwin replied, pointing up at Tau. “Ask her.”

  Tau examined the Nomad faces throughout the chamber, including mine. “Well, so long as they’re not endangering anyone, I don’t see why not?”

  Smiles were shared throughout the room. Antwin hobbled over to her small device, picked it up and deactivated it. She had a smug grin, proud of what she had done.

  Colony brushed through the group and approached. “And what about my family? Look at how many of my kind have been sacrificed in this very room. The Male Dominion never truly let me be with them, so what do you offer?”

  “Colony,” Tau replied, gesturing at the dead Necrolisk bodies around the chamber. “The Necrolisks did help us. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see them fight. I’m sure my resurrection could work on them, too. Providing they never attack the people here, they are welcome to stay.”

  “I’m going to need more than that … all around this planet my family is dying,” he said before looking around at the Nomads. “You’ve all lived out there, you know there isn’t enough food.”

  Although Necrolisks could eat just about anything, they preferred meat. There was no hiding the crowd’s unease and disgust for the Necrolisks. If Tau was to allow them to live nearby, then we would need to make sure they were always under our control.

  I stepped forward. “I can transport the entire nest from Teersau. They can build a new nest outside the city walls.”

  Tau nodded. “Okay, in return for defending this city in times of need, we will feed your family.”

  Colony nodded back in approval, then looked back at the surviving Necrolisks throughout the hall and raised his hand towards them. He turned back to Tau, and as he knelt, the Necrolisks bent down and bowed, too.

  Antwin turned to the crowd. “Those of you who don't want to live here are free to leave. Everyone else should show respect to their new Queen.”

  As Antwin knelt, most of the crowd did, too. The Nomads all looked to their own leaders. The various settlement chieftains pondered, but they eventually bowed and their tribes did in turn. Hati seemed to be the most troubled by the decision, but he also knelt.

  Surprisingly, not one person broke away from the group to leave. The male Acolytes all bowed, too, including Noor and Tetsu.

  Maya bowed next. I pulled Mira’s head to the ground as I bowed, causing her to grunt.

  Tau sat in her throne with widened eyes. “Well ... this certainly feels awkward.”

  As we all stood, I pulled Mira back up with me and she began to cackle. Her laughs were so loud they echoed off the walls and ceiling. “None of you have any idea what you’re doing. Soon a firestorm will fall upon this city.”

  Antwin rolled her eyes and looked at me. “May I?”

  I nodded, and she teleported over to her sword, which she had left in the centre of the throne room. She picked it up and t
eleported back, before thrusting it into Mira’s stomach.

  Mira choked and gargled on her own blood. As I let go of her hair, she fell back onto the ground, dead.

  “Good riddance,” Antwin said, wiping the blood off her sword with her own clothes before putting it back into her walking stick.

  “Now what happens?” one the Nomads asked, and there were mutters of agreement around him.

  Antwin hopped up the steps and stopped next to the throne. She tipped her head towards Tau. “My Queen?”

  Tau exhaled then smiled at the crowd. “Now … we build a new society.”

  Later that night

  Sitting on the Citadel roof

  The view of the city was stunning from here. The usual lights and sounds had returned to the city, but somehow it felt even more colourful than before.

  The very top of the tower was a small square platform with no railings. Tau and Maya sat next to me. We dangled our feet over the edge of the tallest building in the city.

  Antwin tapped her walking stick behind us. “I used to come up here back when I was the Queen,” she said, looking out at the desert beyond the city walls. “It gave me a chance to think.”

  “It’s amazing up here,” I said, looking down at the light-filled urban sprawl.

  “And cold,” Maya said, shivering. The wind chill was too much for her.

  Tau had been silent since Antwin teleported us up here.

  Maya suddenly ignored the cold, determined. “My Queen … I …”

  Tau shook her head. “You don't call me that. We're friends, Maya.”

  Maya nodded. “Tau. My father … he … you can bring him back, right?”

  Tau struggled to find the answer. “I’ve only just discovered resurrection. There are so many people I want to bring back, such as your father, my friends, and Pilgrim, too. But I just don’t know until I try. It might not work, because of … what you turned him into.”

  Maya looked down, her head sinking into her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” Tau said to her, before looking at me. “Sacet, what about your grandfather? Or your parents?”

  I frowned. “That’s not going to work either. They weren’t just killed; their bodies were taken away by Necrolisks, and that was a long time ago. As for my grandfather, he was blown to bits. The Necrolisks would have scavenged what was left of him by now.”

  “Oh,” Tau said, abandoning the idea.

  I hoped my brother was safe, somewhere in the desert with the others I rescued. When things died down here, I could go search for him. Surely they all found shelter together. Where else could they be?

  Maya shook her head. “So are all the prisoners free now?”

  Antwin stepped closer to the edge. “I teleported there myself and made sure everything went smoothly. They’ll be released in the morning and relocated to new housing.”

  Maya nodded. “Then … my family will be waiting for him.”

  Tau put a hand on her shoulder. “You should go, too?”

  Maya shook her head. “No, they won’t want me there, not after what I’ve done.”

  I glanced back at Antwin. “Before, you mentioned that I helped you get your memory back, what were you talking about?”

  Antwin sighed. “I credited you because your rebellious attitude sparked some my old memories. Then I threatened to kill those assimilation scientists if they didn’t help me restore myself. While I was there, they told me something else quite interesting about you, Sacet.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “The scientists told me that they were unable to make any difference to your mind. They couldn’t get in. Their brainwashing failed. They had never encountered anything like it.”

  “So … all my feelings of confusion over which side I should be on, that was just me?”

  Antwin nodded. “Correct. I don’t know why, but perhaps that has something to do with why Mira focused on you so much. She called me in, a specialist, to train you. She had Tau killed in front of you and she executed Pilgrim and … others … in front of you.”

  “So it was all planned?” Maya asked, ignoring the reference to her father.

  “Yes,” Antwin said. “It was all orchestrated so Sacet would experience more trauma. More trauma means stronger powers.”

  “But why me?” I asked. “I still don’t understand why? Or … why they want to prolong this war? Who are they?”

  Antwin shook her head gravely. “I honestly don’t know the answer to those questions.”

  There was a silence before Antwin continued. “Speaking of them, where exactly did you send Kalek and those colonels? Kalek isn’t dead yet, surely?”

  “I didn’t kill him … I just sent him away, far away.”

  40. Fall

  Kalek

  Seron’s upper atmosphere

  I reached and tried to grab the tiny woman as we spun in the zero-gravity environment. The choking colonel didn’t notice me, instead gripping at her chest. The liquid around her mouth and eyes evaporated into vapour.

  She contorted and exhaled into the vacuum. A scream was frozen on her face. Her skin was already reddened from the star’s unfiltered radiation. She convulsed again then went motionless, finally dead. The body drifted away. I pitied her. No matter, she’d soon be revived.

  Seeming as I didn’t need oxygen, the whole experience was quite surreal. There was no sound in space, other than the blood pumping in my eardrums. I was freezing, yet flush with sunburn. The planet took up most of my view.

  That Sacet girl, she was holding out on us. If I had of known she could do this, I wouldn’t have gone easy on her.

  Her portal was long closed. A bright, white ball floated where it used to be. It was one of the other colonels in suspended animation. Great, how many of us were going to fall for that trick?

  A hazy silhouette passed over the white light. It grew larger until it eclipsed the ball. It was Neva in her sand form. She was somehow propelling herself in the empty vacuum.

  She came at me and surrounded my body. The cloud brushed my face and lips. It entered through my now widened mouth and nostrils, before trickling down my throat and into my stomach. She tickled, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Still caught in the planet’s gravity, the dead body caught fire and burnt away into nothingness. Good, it would only be a matter of time before I fell back to the planet’s surface … I hoped.

  My skin was heating further, but I wasn’t worried. This was nothing, I would survive this. All of these weaklings around me were susceptible to so much. At times like this, I was truly grateful for my immortality.

  I caught fire, but I still felt nothing, no pain. My ears popped, and I could hear the blazing flames around me. The air pressure in the atmosphere was starting to thicken.

  The sand inside my stomach quivered; the heat was getting to her somehow. I closed my mouth and pinched my nostrils. Was that better now? She still squirmed. Well, too bad, I’ve done all I could do.

  The burning subsided, my body was dropping in temperature. Another layer of the atmosphere? This was taking forever. Where would I hit? I supposed it was impossible to tell from this high up. I hoped it was somewhere with civilisation nearby, I didn’t want to walk all the way back. I also didn’t want to contact … him.

  A blanket of clouds grew as I hurtled. At least I wasn’t landing in the ocean. It was getting colder. Neva wasn’t shaking around anymore so I stopped pinching my nose. The wind blasted past my ears. Hurry up! Come on!

  I rocketed into the clouds and was surrounded by grey mist. The spray glazed my squinting eyes. The furious wind billowed against my cheeks. I shot through and out of the cloud, and spotted the desert floor. The cloud’s shadow darkened the world below. I recognised where this was, I was going to land in the middle of nowhere.

  Of all the crazy things I had been through, this was the most dangerous. When I hit, would I feel pain this time? It’s been a long time since I’ve felt pain. I better try landing on my feet, just
in case. I waved my arms, trying to rotate my body. I was going to hit any moment now. I could make out separate rocks and cliffs below.

  “Brace yourself, we’re about to hit!”

  The sand became heavier in the pit of my stomach, as if solidifying.

  My feet plunged into the ground, rippling a wave displaced soil away from me. The sand grated my skin as my body drove itself farther down. I was completely covered, buried alive.

  I gradually raised my arms through the shifting sand until they pointed above. I then bent my knees. I gave an almighty push, springing up and out of the crater. My escape cast dust everywhere. The shockwave quaked the nearby cliffs, and they started to crumble.

  My gag reflex acted involuntarily, so I bent over. It like I was going to vomit. Neva shot up my oesophagus and out my mouth and nostrils. Her cloud hovered in front of me, before reforming back into the attractive colonel.

  I chuckled. “Did you enjoy being inside of me? Being a part of me?”

  She glared. “You degenerate. Did you have to eat? It was a mess in there, and you don’t even need to eat!” She flicked a piece of undigested food from her shoulder then inspected her new robes for more.

  I gestured around. “Well, we’re stuck here now. I don’t suppose you can communicate with the sand or something to get us a ride home?”

  “I already told you … I … don’t … TURN … INTO SAND! Got it?” she said and turned away from me. “Why don’t you just call Overwatch and get it over with?”

  I sighed: “He’s not going to be happy.”

  “Oh, what’s this? I thought you weren’t scared of anything.”

  “The only thing I fear is time. I need that promotion, and if he blames me for this, I’m not going to ever get it. This was my last shot.”

  “Fine, I’ll talk to them. Make contact.”

  I nodded, opened my mouth, and reached in with my hand. I could barely fit my stubby fingers in to reach the molar at the back, but grabbed hold of it and yanked it out. As I held it in front of us, a small blue beam of light shot up from it, before widening into a holographic float screen.