Flaws and Failures
The night is settling; the ghouls are waking.
Lucia’s the first to brave leaving the fire bay, barbed wire long since cut. “I think I can block in the sound for… a hundred meters. So we’re marching that far.”
“I’m actually trained and can reach two hundred,” Hanna says while climbing after.
Being shorter than either of them, I need their help to get up.
They’re happy to give it; it’s the proper way to treat their shared date.
Hanna doesn’t pull her hand away from me after I’m up; instead, she reaffirms its grip on me. “May I hold your hand?”
“Sure…” Deep breath. Just this and a kiss, and I’ll make Mistress Vincenza proud.
“Did you know that this was supposed to be my date?“ Lucia muses to Hanna.
“You just lack a surgeon’s finesse with women,” Hanna teases.
“You’ve actually done surgery?”
“Some whores can’t afford licensed surgeons. Not because of money, of course.”
“It helps when their doctor accepts alternative forms of payment.”
Hanna sighs. “My girlfriend doesn’t let me sleep around with them anymore. Remind me to call her up before you try sticking your hand down my pants.”
Something stings in me.
I knew, far in the back of my head, that of course she had someone she actually cared for romantically. She can’t truly love each random woman who passes her a few hundred crescents for sex.
I wasn’t ever going to be different.
But I think I wanted to.
I think it felt easier to imagine a kiss after an ‘I love you.’ Sex after I confided my worst secrets. After I felt that I knew her.
That closeness, was it always so far?
The thought closing in on me as we tread the mud… is that I’m not distressed. I’m not surprised. I wanted to have a romance, but I don’t think I truly thought we could. She’s nice, and lovely, but I’m not sure where we would’ve fit together as anything other than patron and consort.
I’ve grown aware of just how uncomfortable my hand is in hers, yet it feels easier to breathe now that I can give up. I can give up.
I’d only disappoint Mistress Vincenza.
Never mind. Not easier to breathe. Not easier at all.
“Stand here.” Lucia puts her hands on Hanna’s hips. Once Hanna’s still, Lucia holds out her arm, taking ten steps to the right while keeping it pointed at… a dugout? “I think we’re one fifty out.”
“How often do you do this?” Hanna asks.
“I sometimes moonlight as a spotter on merchant guard ships.” Lucia brushes back her hair nonchalantly.
“A near soldier, a near surgeon, and a near necromancer? We’re quite the squad.” Hanna laughs while flicking her hand. The air chills; the ambience dies. “Permission to fire, lady of the merchant guard?”
“Wait a minute. I’m not trashing my ears.” Lucia pulls out a wad of cotton and starts picking it apart.
“I can cancel out all sounds if you really don’t want to go deaf.”
“We do need to summon the ghouls eventually.”
Let me try. I should try. I could do it. I will summon all of them.
I toss my head to the side. My jaw is in pain from being clenched. My mouth is drying out.
“You’re cold!” Hanna drops my hand.
I lift my eyes. “Can I try to summon them?”
Hanna shrugs and signs, ‘sure.‘
“Can you do the sound thing?”
She rolls her eyes, smirks, and signs back, ‘I can’t hear you.‘
Ah, fuck. My ears have started ringing. The static hisses at me with indifferent hatred. My hand is stained with the lingering touch of Hanna, just the smallest trace of the Ring emanating from it.
Inhale. Bring it close to my chest. “Tirit lavdexi.”
The activation phrase for necromancy spells, like in the books—I don’t know why I said that.
Lucia frantically loads her rifle while signing in one hand, ‘ghouls!‘
I twitch, placing my back against the both of them. The area is quite… 150 meters? And then it would be something more than twenty thousand times—Fucking, whatever. I’m not doing this math right now! There’s a lot of ghouls!
And three of us.
Everything’s still wildly stacked in our favor at least, even though I can see the distant shadows between the trees start to move toward us.
I’m pushed forward by Hanna falling into my back. I turn around to see what it was for, realizing that she took the recoil from a shot I couldn’t hear—I won’t be able to so much as scream for help if something happens.
Deep breath. One ghoul’s nearest. I take the shot slowly, not to waste my limited ammunition.
Death feels nice. Better, when it’s organic.
I break from the circle so I don’t feel them. I only need to feel the rifle. I only need to feel the ritual of killing something.
But these don’t count.
My muscles lose the strength to pull back the bolt. My breath shudders. I just wanted to feel happy for these few moments. Distracted. But my mind wants me to know that the two women I’m bonding with will die.
It won’t be fun.
I, a near stranger to one and an impoverished nobody to the other, wouldn’t see the ceremonies that commemorate them. I would cry for a few nights, then years would pass, and their memory would come only to interrupt my sleep once every season.
And maybe that’s beautiful.
Maybe it’s good to wither.
A silent bite into my right hand drags me down into a ugly reality where a corpse’s teeth are stinging my skin and more surround.
I thrust the rifle forward to snare that first ghoul with the bayonet, but my hand feels empty even as it’s freed. Useless.
Drop the rifle. Grab the pistol. Relax. Stay calm. Load it in one hand while it’s in my pocket.
Look up and jump back as something pathetically swipes for me.
Press the pistol to my chest with my elbow while cocking it. Finally. There may not be sound to accompany my relief, but I can feel an orchestra in my head as I kill six ghouls and waste a seventh shot on the bayoneted one, out of spite. Malice.
Hatred.
I drop into the mud and puff.
The silence breaks with Hanna’s panting. “Stop shooting! Shit, that’s hard to keep up.”
“Don’t worry about it. You can sit there all cute while a real mage handles the next—“
I prop myself up on my good hand to climb to my feet. Turning around, I get to have the luxury of watching Lucia and Hanna kiss—and Lucia trying to fit her hand under Hanna’s pants.
I avert my eyes north, to where the Great Ring shines, orbiting just above our home. I love it, but I can’t get myself to love its gifts.
Stomping back to the dugout to not interrupt their moment, I decide the load in the extra eighth bullet. Formerly, the one in the chamber. Still is. But it went from the first one to be free… to last.
If I could just kill them. Drop to my knees, covered in their blood, pray to the Great Ring until it hears. It’ll give me what I want. Because I’m the chosen one. It loves me, and me the most. Tirit lavdexi.
I drop against the wall of the trench and grab my chest. Why am I thinking this? I know I shouldn’t—Mistress Vincenza’s ‘homework.’ The necromancy book, it explained this. Just like how the Vampire Queen did her first spell.
Beneath full patronization, marked by a Ringborn’s eyes, there’s still a spectrum of access to the Ring. Simple skin contact with a Ringborn, or as one, is enough to draw out a little, and a little is enough to start hearing whispers of the music. At least, when someone is close to death.
I turn my head back. Lucia and Hanna are slowly following behind, a stack of smoke following.
I look to the ground. Only thirty years ago, the Immortal Queens ran through here, massacring soldiers with bertholite.
I close my eyes, and see pages after pages of introductory lessons to necromancy, flipped in the dark to the tune of forgotten meals.
My heart slowly soothes, thinking of getting help from Mistress Vincenza. She’ll understand what I’m going through. She’ll help.
But she’s not helping now. Right now, I’m finding a dark corner of the dugout to sleep in while my failed dates explore each other.
I pull out her pistol, cradling it in my hands. I slowly put my lips on its side. I wish she was here. The woman who cared at least enough to throw me a blanket.