Queen's Revenge Pt 1 - Prologue

CHAPTER ZERO

ROGUES ESCAPE

War consumed Arilon. From Graft to Doctreena, from Valia to Phobos, citizen fought citizen. Some fought for the Queen, some fought against her. Eventually, the war had brought its chaos to the isle of Vindictum - all the way to a quiet little town called Riva. Resistance and Royalist forces fought to claim the territory. All of this commotion was terribly inconvenient for three individuals who had simply come to the island to perform some good, honest, old-fashioned thievery. But war is an animal that surrounds from all sides. The only way to beat it is…

The only way to beat it is…

Hmm.

“How do you beat it?” asked the Professor.

“What…?” said Ajo. “Professor, what are you talking about?”

“War,” said the Professor. “I was just wondering how you beat war. It’s for my memoirs. I’m drafting the opening chapter in my head right now.”

Ajo stopped running. The Professor stopped running. Ajo turned and stared at the Professor who appeared somewhat puzzled at the look of annoyance on the teenager’s face.

“Can you remember what we are doing right now?” asked the ebony-skinned Valian warrior.

“Of course,” said the older man. “We’re running.”

“From who?”

“Many royal soldiers.”

“Because…?”

“We stole something.”

“And…?”

“They want it back.”

“So this is not the best time to be writing your memoirs because…?”

“Ah, because,” the Professor realised, clicking a finger, “I don’t have a pen.”

Ajo threw his hands over his face. “For you, Professor, there is no hope, this is true.”

The Professor looked up at the ceiling, brow furrowed in concentration. “Or paper… I don’t have any paper…”

The opening chapter of the Professor’s memoirs were not wrong. The island he and his two young associates had come to was a busy one, made even busier by the war. But the town of Riva had always been quiet. ‘Quiet as a grave’, the Professor had joked upon their arrival eighteen hours ago. His jokes were renowned for not being funny. And so it had proved just a few hours later when they’d stolen the item they’d been sent here to steal only to find their escape cut off by angry Royalists and even angrier Resistance fighters all shooting and hitting each other. As Ajo confirmed for the Professor, war was never funny. Especially when it stopped them from getting paid.

“Look, rebels!”

Ajo and the Professor jerked their gaze back down the corridor as six crimson-armoured royal soldiers burst from the grand entrance of the Governor’s Banquet Hall. Light infantry, Ajo noted. No rifles, swords only. Good, that made things easier.

The Professor folded his arms, offended. “Rebels?! We are not dirty rebels! We’re honest thieves thank you very much!”

Ajo turned and calmly strode down the corridor towards the onrushing soldiers.

“Professor, find Lake. She was meant to meet us here,” said the young warrior. He drew the short kaskara sword from its sheath on his back. “Leave these ones to me.”

Ajo was a Kio warrior from the northern cities of the island of Valia. To the Kio people, you cannot be a warrior unless you have a name. So on his thirteenth birthday, like all the young warrior-students, he was allowed to take one. Unfortunately, it was located on the other side of an angry bull-wolf with a sword strapped to its back. At the end of the day, he had his name and a brand new sword to boot. Over the following four years, he’d gotten quite attached to both and no royal thug was going to take either from him today.

The soldiers slowed down as they drew close to the young Valian. The boy stood still and silent, his simple brown leathers and white robes contrasting sharply against the shiny, blood red armour of his assailants. Their six blades were up and threatening, his one blade down and waiting. His hard stare locked onto the cold, blank, featureless helmets of the soldiers.

Nobody moved.

“So, I’ll just pop off and look for Lake, then, shall I?” the Professor suddenly piped up.

Just for a moment, one of the soldiers glanced up at the middle-aged man in the bow-tie and smart, tweed suit standing just up the corridor. That moment was all the time Ajo needed.

“Look out! He’s-”

Those were the only words any of the soldiers had a chance to say. The kaskara blade span and danced among and between and around. The soldiers dodged and swiped and missed and swiped again but the Valian was wind flowing through trees - they couldn’t stop the tempest and were instead eroded by it, branch by branch. Every swipe, every cut, whittling, knawing, slicing, until just seconds later...

“Bravo!” the Professor clapped as the skirmish ended as suddenly as it had begun. “Not as impressive as me doing a quadratic equation with no pencil but still, bravo!”

Ajo stood. All around him, six royal soldiers did not. He sheathed his blade and strode toward the Professor. “I have been thinking,” said the Valian, “perhaps begin your memoirs with a joke?”

“Boys!”

The pair jerked their heads at yet another voice, calling them. This time, though, it wasn’t more of the Queen’s men.

“Lake!” the Professor cried, grateful to see the young girl as she emerged from a service corridor further up the main hallway. “I’m so glad you’re still in one piece.” Then he frowned. “You are in one piece, aren’t you? You’re so short, it’s hard to tell sometimes.”

The girl was eight years old and hence the youngest and, yes, shortest member of their little collective. Her long, white-blonde, unruly hair flitted around her face. She wore a simple, white dress, went barefoot and wore a brown, leather satchel strapped over one shoulder. She had the waif-like appearance of a lonely ghost and looked as odd on her own as the three of them did together. She stepped out into the hallway and finally - after eighteen hectic hours on Vindictum that included three fistfights, eight explosions, a double-wedding and a really rubbish assassin - the Rogue’s Run Trio were finally re-united.

Lake glanced at the unmoving shapes of the six soldiers, scattered around like discarded rag dolls.

“Busy?” she raised an eyebrow.

For reasons nobody knew, Lake only ever spoke in single-word sentences. The trio had been together for so long now, though, that her teammates always knew what she meant.

“Not really,” said the Professor. “I was just watching Ajo.”

Well, nearly always.

“Yes, Lake,” Ajo said, pointedly looking at the Professor. “We have been busy, this is true. But we are together again, the three of us. And the Professor has the item, so we can escape this place now, yes? Before there are any more surprises.”

“It was a surprise how bad that assassin was, though, I mean, really...!” the Professor buried his face in his hands, laughing. “Who yells ‘surprise’ before a surprise attack?”

“Crybaby,” agreed Lake, shaking her head.

“Only because the Professor was so mean to him,” said Ajo. “I would have burst into tears, too, this is true.”

Adventure followed the three smugglers wherever they went (or perhaps they followed adventure, none of them was quite sure). They had been secretly hired by a very important individual to locate a very special and important item. The item’s existence wasn’t even certain - nevertheless, there were many stories about it and the individual put good stock in stories. Especially when those stories also said that the item was greatly treasured by the Queen and whoever owned it could, in fact, bring about the evil monarch’s destruction. That interested the mysterious individual a great deal.

The Rogue’s Run Trio had exercised their considerable skill in finding what people wanted to keep hidden. Finding it and stealing it. All of which meant that the adventure that followed them (or that they followed) had ended with them trying to escape from the Vindictum Governor’s mansion. A place that was the site of a major battle between the Queen’s forces and those of the Arilon People’s Army. With the item finally in their possession, the trio now wanted nothing more than to get to the nearby docks, return to their small cutter ship, the Rogue’s Run, get off the island and rendezvous with their employer - a prominent member of the Resistance. All of that meant that they could finally get paid and do the only thing any of them wanted right now - find a beach, drink copious amounts of blastberry juice and forget this crazy war.

Two men and a woman suddenly burst from the same doorway that Lake had emerged from. The men brandished swords in the trio’s direction while the woman trained a rifle at them. Ajo’s blade re-emerged in a flash and the Professor’s antique showman’s pistol also made a swift appearance.

“Wait!” cried Lake holding out her hands to all, a tiny, white dot calming down the pack of war dogs.

“Lake?” the woman said, a tired but relieved smile finding its way to her lips. She lowered her weapon and everyone else did the same. “I thought we’d lost you, child.”

“Ah, Commander Wood,” said the Professor to the Resistance soldier. “Sorry, I didn’t recognise you right away. When people run, they all start to look the same to me, I’m afraid. It's because my brain works so much faster than normal people's brains. I’ve been writing my memoirs, you see...”

Lake shot the Professor a bewildered look. “Memoirs?”

Ajo dropped his head and shook it in sympathetic despair. “Do not even...”

The two lieutenants cast an anxious glance at the corridor they had just emerged from, their hands still firmly gripping their sword hilts. All three of the Resistance soldiers wore the recognisable black and white patchwork armour of the Arilon People’s Resistance. Their uniforms weren’t as clean or shiny as the armour worn by the soldiers and Knights that fought for the Queen. The battle-damaged sections weren’t repaired or replaced as easily and they certainly couldn’t afford to get everyone a helmet. But despite the lack of equipment or protection, they fought anyway. It was too important not to.

Commander Wood took a step closer to the trio. She was still breathing hard from whatever combat she’d just been involved in but even that wasn’t enough to mask the excitement that was now creeping into her voice.

“Lake tells me you fellas found the Fourth Treasure,” Wood said, hefting her rifle from left to right. “That true? The Fourth Treasure’s actually real? And it was right here the whole time?”

“Lake,” said the Professor, closing his eyes and pinching his nose as if trying to ward off an oncoming migraine, “I feel I need to remind you that before we embarked on this mission, we did decide to put the word ‘secret’ in front of it...”

“So, it is true?” the Resistance Commander said, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “And is it true that it could bring about the fall of the Queen, like the stories say?”

“I don’t know about that,” said the Professor. “But it is true that it could bring about the being-rich of the Rogue’s Run Trio like the Professor say…”

“Commander,” Ajo broke in, “what position do the Royals hold? We need to reach our ship in the west port.”

“We’re holding the crownies at the east port for now,” Commander Wood jerked her head in the direction they’d come from moments ago. There was blood smeared across one side of her face. It wasn’t immediately clear whether or not it was hers. “But if you really have the Fourth Treasure then we’ll do everything we can to get you out of here.”

“This is good to hear,” said Ajo. “Judging by our last few encounters with the Queen’s people, we believe they have realised what we are doing here. If this is the case, we need to be away as soon as possible. We need to get to the Rogue’s-”

“Run,” said Lake.

“Thank you, Lake,” scoffed the Professor. “I think we know the name of our own ship.”

“Run!” Lake grabbed the Professor by the arm. Instantly the mood changed. There was no mistaking the terror in Lake’s voice.

“What is it...?” Wood asked.

“Lake is a Sensitive. She sees things in the Threads, this is true,” said Ajo. “Not always and not as clearly as a Weaver, but…”

“What do you see right now?” the Professor interrupted.

Lake stared into the middle-distance, her eyes unfocused and said, as ever, just one word.

“Death.”

At that moment, another Resistance soldier burst out of the narrow service corridor into the hallway, joining the group.

“Commander!” he said and then several more words tumbled out of him. The words stunned the six people hearing them and Commander Wood told the man to stop, breathe and repeat himself.

So the man stopped, breathed and repeated himself.

“I said the Twilight Palace just arrived at the east dock. The Queen got off. She’s here!”

The Rogue’s Run Trio looked at each other in mute shock. Instinctively, the Professor’s hand went to his jacket pocket and the item resting there. The item they had been sent to steal. The item belonging to the Queen.

“Bring the First Unit back to the inner corridor,” Commander Wood started. “Tell them to set up the-” but the young man interrupted.

“The Queen killed the First Unit.”

Commander Wood caught her breath. “What… all of them? How many troops has she brought with her?”

“No, ma’am,” the soldier hurriedly shook his head. “I don’t mean her troops killed the First Unit. I mean she did. On her own.”

A darkness fell over the group. It was a darkness that told them exactly what they were facing, and it wasn’t good.

“Pull all the other units in,” said Wood finally. “I want them between the Queen and us, do you understand? She must not reach the west docks!”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man said and disappeared back into the doorway.

The Commander turned back to the trio. “You fellas better get moving. We’ll hold her off as long as we can.”

“Way ahead of you, Commander,” said the Professor as he ushered his young teammates down the corridor.

“And Professor?” Wood glanced at the Professor as she brought her rifle up. “Whatever that thing is, I hope it’s worth it.”

The Professor nodded. “Me too. Thank you Commander.”

And the Rogue’s Run Trio ran.

Almost immediately, as the lavish corridors of the Governor’s mansion swept by, the sounds of shouts and screams began to rise up like a tide of horror. Coming from somewhere far away, the noise echoed up along the corridors, chasing them like an avalanche, slowly gaining more and more speed and intensity.

Following the path they had taken upon their arrival just yesterday morning, the Rogue’s Run Trio sprinted to keep ahead of the sound of chaos chasing them. Shouts, rifle shots, pistol fire, the clang of swords hitting stone and through it all, a hissing, rasping sound that chilled the bones of all three rogues.

Just when the unearthly noise seemed to steal close enough to overwhelm them, the trio rounded a corner and exited the mansion into the west docks. They weren’t particularly large docks and the only ship moored there was their own, the Rogue’s Run. The sails were already up (in their line of business, you tended to leave places in a hurry). It was relatively small but being a cutter, it was extraordinarily fast. Judging from the noise that had chased them here, a quick getaway in a fast ship was just what the doctor ordered. Assuming the doctor hadn’t been slaughtered by whatever was making that noise.

“Professor,” a man in black and white armour strode up to the trio. Behind him was an entire detachment of Resistance soldiers. The two stars on his shoulder marked him as a Lieutenant. “Commander Wood ordered us to protect your escape. Any word of her?”

“Professor!” Ajo suddenly gripped the older man’s arm. Terror was not something the Professor often heard in the young warrior’s voice but he heard it now.

He turned to see her standing there.

Silhouetted at first against the fire and smoke emanating from the mansion corridor, the Queen strode forward, slowly. To their credit, the resistance fighters swallowed their shock and fear quickly and raised their weapons. Rifles, pistols and swords were all instantly raised at the slowly advancing monarch.

The Queen was dressed as though she were attending a ball. Her ivory gown flowed gracefully from neck to ankle. It was studded with a million tiny stones - blood-red rubies and nightmare-black obsidian, all sparkling in the pale light of the white Arilon sun high above them.

The most unnerving aspect of the Queen’s appearance, though, was the fact she was totally relaxed. Her face was calm, her stride unhurried. Even her beauty was somehow unreal and otherworldly. The skin was pale, her lips were a deep, ruby red and her expression was at once innocent and dangerous. Her gaze was hypnotic. Every single individual on that dock found themselves momentarily unable to look away from the dark eyes that seemed to contain no whites. Just a single, gleaming diamond in the centre of each.

The Queen came to a stop and stood motionless, alone and unarmed. Tall, lean and fearsome but still one person before fifty. Her hands were empty - there was no sign of whatever weapons she had surely used to cut her way through so many trained and seasoned fighters. One of those hands raised now and pointed directly at the Rogue’s Run Trio. When the words came from her mouth, it didn’t feel like she was speaking them. It felt more as though she was sending the words from her mouth and into the ears of each person present. The words were on a mission - they had been given orders by their Queen which they carried out with purpose and foreboding. And the words were;

“Return. It.”

At the sound of the Queen’s voice, something awakened in everyone present. It was the same thing that eventually awakens in the gazelle when it sees the lion. At first it freezes. Then it wakes up and runs for its life.

“Go!” the Resistance Lieutenant shouted at the Professor and as the Queen began to move toward them, the trio did just that. They sprinted toward the Rogue’s Run and up the gangplank. The three of them frantically prepared the vessel to slip its moorings and take off and as they did so, the Professor briefly looked up to see how the soldiers were getting on. He immediately wished he  hadn’t.

Earlier, he had watched Ajo attack the six soldiers like a wind rushing through trees. This, though… this was like watching a storm destroy a forest. The Queen danced and weaved in such smooth motions that were almost beautiful to watch, yet were too blindingly fast to keep up with. Her hands moved and two swords filled them from seemingly nowhere. Her body moved smoothly, phasing from one position to another, almost like a dancer. And yet, somehow, at the same time, she tore through the Resistance soldiers like an angry hurricane, furiously rendering all opposition limb from limb. Even the ivory dress that had sat so simply and beautifully had now come alive - strips of black, white and red material flowed outwards as if alive, impaling and severing with horrifying serenity.

The men and women of the Resistance dredged up every scrap of bravery they possessed and fell upon the Queen, wave after wave. And wave after wave, they fell away, screaming in terror and then suddenly silent. The Queen scythed and sheared her way through them all.

Creeping ruthlessly and relentlessly towards the Rogue’s Run.

“Professor!” Ajo called. The young Valian had angled the sails and Lake had wound up the gangplank. “We must go, now!”

Pushing back the wave of terror that had engulfed him, the Professor ran across the deck to the ship’s wheel. As the sails were now angled to catch the impossible wind of the Arilon NothingSpace, the ship was beginning to sway left and right, straining to be let off its leash. The Professor steadied himself against the rocking as he made his way across the deck. It seemed like a journey of a million miles because all the older man could see in his mind’s eye was the storm of ivory, crimson and black destruction that was headed toward them.

Finally, though, his hands were on the wheel.

“Quickly!” Lake cried from her position on the ship’s rigging, looking down on the chaos unfolding on the docks. Heeding her uncharacteristically frantic tone, the Professor threw the speed level forward and the ship immediately lurched forward. It was usual push-off procedure to start slowly and increase speed as you moved away from the docks. Not today, though. Not with what was behind them.

The Rogue’s Run blasted off from its moorings and burst into the black sky like a bullet, clinging to the Travel Line that led away from the island. Even as they lifted off, the Professor felt that surely they were going to be pulled back at any moment. Or perhaps the Queen would magic herself aboard the ship and visit her terrible vengeance upon them. But there were no shouts or screams from his two shipmates and so he chanced a glance behind him. Ajo and Lake were also looking back at the island and the three of them saw a sight that would stay with them as long as they lived.

Nothing moved on the docks of Riva. Bodies of Resistance soldiers were strewn about like dolls after a child’s tantrum. Rifles, pistols and swords were scattered over the ground, as useless now as they had obviously been when raised against the Queen.

And the Queen herself.

The ivory gown was still, now. The red and black stones no longer sparkled, they just rested, sated from their feast. And even from this distance, the two black eyes with the pinpricks of diamond could clearly be seen staring out of the Queen’s face. Staring at the Rogue’s Run Trio. The three thieves couldn’t tear their collective gaze away from the horrific scene in front of them. The Queen, standing alone in the midst of the death and destruction she had wrought.

After seconds that seemed like a lifetime, and as the ship continued to race away from Vindictum, the all-enveloping darkness of the NothingSpace drew in and obscured the island from view. The Queen and her surrounding landscape were mercifully enveloped in a cloak of gloom.

They were now free to take any one of a hundred different branches the Travel Lines offered, each one leading to a hundred more. The Queen would not be able to follow them now. And yet, not even that could reassure the three smugglers nor wipe from their memories the vision of the Queen’s single-handed destruction. They would remember it for the rest of their lives.

However short that would yet prove to be.