Twelfth Hunting Regiment of the Lich Queen
Cute. Adorable. A wonderful couple.
Just about everything that comes to mind as I listen to Lucia and Hanna flirt over this two hour ride. Two nearly straight women? Who could be more perfect for each other.
Nearly straight is unfair to say. I know Lucia just has an easier time finding submissive men than women, and Hanna hasn’t even explicitly confirmed that she has any attraction for men. But it’s not unfair to think. I can be wrong. I can stare at the happiness between two people and feel empty.
This was my date with each of them. Where’s my confidence to flirt too?
Withering like the snow, turning into softer and softer winter winds of a place further and further away from the Lich Queen’s cold grip. Withering like the tracks, switching from the main rail lines to the old military ones as we approach the former border between Lawrin and Roversella.
Withering like me. I’m trying to remember if I ate yesterday. I’m trying to find room to be hungry as I turn down free biscottini.
Maybe to wither is good?
“Do you want an almond?” Hanna giggles, tapping my hand.
I lift my eyes and study the two singing lovebirds in my row. There’s a joke I’m not in on. “Why?”
Lucia snickers from the aisle seat.
“These are iron enriched! Good for you,“ Hanna says, mouth quivering like she’s holding back laughter.
I grab it and hold it between my teeth. “O-okay?”
They sneer and laugh their way back into a conversation I can’t focus enough on to join.
I lean back into the chair and pass the almond between my molars until the train stops in the middle of nowhere, leaving me to spit my thoroughly gnawed drupe into a napkin.
The ground outside is nondescript and definitely not a platform. Only the sole entrance to a communication trench breaks the plain deciduous forest.
A separate car opens, soldiers exiting. The oldest, most veteran one with eyes glowing a dull silver stands in front of us. “Everyone split in fours!” her voice, tattered by smoker’s lung, shrieks.
“You two, me.” Lucia wraps her arms between me and Hanna. “Hope the boys can have fun with each other.”
“Whatever could lonely boy soldiers do all alone?” Hanna muses with a giggle.
The veteran walks a semi circle around us.
“Each group gets two soldiers for safety.” She snaps her fingers, and two join behind us—tall, like Mistress Vincenza.
“Ghouls are weak and disorganized, but they can easily overpower you. I’m the only necromancer; you have to call for me if you’re overwhelmed. ”
Another group of soldiers walks across, handing out bolt-action rifles. They’re heavy, about the same age as the pistol in my pocket. I fumble to get the thing right in my hands.
Lucia glances at my handling. “Could we get a left-handed rifle?”
The veteran steps forward, following Lucia’s pointing to me. She pulls the rifle off her back and switches it with mine before returning to the front of the group. “If you’ve forgotten how to use them since lower secondary, refer to your group’s escorts for help.”
And now another group passes out ammunition. Twenty rounds.
I clutch the rifle to my chest as I load them in. The sounds, the weight in my hands, it puts me just there. Wisps of memory fly over my eyes, the sound of gunshots in my ear. I was a child practicing for a routine I’d play in death.
The undead soldiers all surrounded me; my sniffly nose couldn’t smell what everyone else whined about. The teachers all grabbed their ringed fingers and prayed as the corpses passed.
I would just obey, focus on the target and shoot. The dead knew how to laugh, didn’t they? I was just another poor shot. Another poor heart. I could never kill. I would only be good for dumb labor when I became a corpse.
“Where will you work when you’re old? My dad said that undead will work all the stupid people jobs when we’re older,“ my crush said to me. She was tall; I got to see her look down at me as she snapped the lines to my heart.
“All set. March!” The veteran’s harsh voice breaks my distraction.
It’s time to muddy Mistress Vincenza’s perfect gift, following Lucia and Hanna as the Third Rifle of the First Hand of the Twelfth Hunting Regiment of the Lich Queen, may all worship the Great Ring and its divine heralds.
Our escort into and through the trenches is stopped to have the dugouts marked, then continued out to the fire bays.
“Everyone stays in the bays!” the veteran shouts. “You will be mistaken for a ghoul if you leave. You will be shot. We will not come for you.”
Lucia groans, “you guys put up sword fights in the papers.”
“For high paying guests with parties no larger than five, and with a week of training in advance, yes. For twenty untrained teenagers? No.” The veteran pulls out a strange grenade. “I’ll throw this in twenty seconds. Everyone to their station. No shots until this rings!”
Hanna knocks my shoulder and whispers, “we’re going to jump out and bayonet some ghouls after, right?”
“Fuck yes, we are,” Lucia replies.
“Sh-should we?” I mount my rifle to a dirt hole. “Lucia… if you were…”
My throat tenses.
A whole funerary service full of Ringborns, and me. There next to Lucia. Body shivering. We left a concrete pillar in the garden, name inscribed.
And I knew, the whole time, that her family would never invite me for her funeral.
I can’t invoke it like this, to make her move as I wish.
A sharp, ear piercing bang tears into my perceptions, the veteran yelling, “ghouls incoming! Fire for effect!”
I frantically take a pot-shot in unison with everyone else. The sound of our bolts comes in unison too.
“She’s not using the term right,” Hanna begins.
Another round of shots. Through the dissipating smoke, I can start to see some corpses. Some are running towards us. Some are down.
“It’s for artillery,” Hanna adds. “We weren’t told what effect we’re firing for.”
“Aren’t you well educated?” Lucia muses in a honeyed voice.
The veteran orders, “break shot! Conserve your ammo. Shoot for the ghouls approaching you. No volleys.”
It was too beautiful to have the repeating song of bullets in rhythm, wasn’t it?
“Slow down your shots,” Lucia whispers under intermittent fire. “We need some for later.”
We totalled five rounds in the fire bays, twenty bullets given out per. We could look normal only shooting ten, so now we have fifty.
And I’m almost for their plan. At some point, touring the trenches while being read personal accounts from soldiers of rabid disease and sleeping next to dead friends and lovers makes me want to leave—any direction. Ghouls can’t be worse than this.
We’re ordered to our dugouts, which I have to guess are improved from their original counterparts. Sleek floors, incandescent lighting, a stove with clean pans and food unsafe bottles of olive oil, not even one corpse—every breath feels inauthentic.
“The room is yours for the night. Lock the door. Ring the bell if there’s trouble.” Our two escorts leave back outside.
I jolt back from their voice. I didn’t know they could talk!
Hanna sits on the edge of a cot, lighting a cigarette. “About how many fags until they go to their own quarters, you think?”
“Pass me one.” Lucia sits next to Hanna. “We should say three, just to stay safe.”
I hesitantly join their giggling.
Hanna beckons me. “You know, it’s good for your heart health. Get it pumping without all the work of exercise. Filtered too, so it’ll help those lungs.”
“I was wondering why it tasted like asbestos,” Lucia sneers.
“Oh, and what brand are you, you picky little bitch? Those filterless ones give you cancer.”
“Whores and communists smoke filtered.” Lucia gives a dainty kiss to Hanna’s cheek. “I guess we’re all just whores for the night.”
Hanna turns to me and winks. “You don’t need to stay over there fantasizing.”
I want to just turn my eyes over them and be flooded with desires. I want to be staring at their chests or their faces, at their lips and not what’s stuck between them.
It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing. Some years trimmed from someone who was never going to live forever. It shouldn’t cause my muscles to tense. It’s beautiful to die and be scattered upon the Great Ring.
Inhale. Clasp hands. Whisper a prayer. “Great Ring, make me want what is good for me.”
Hanna cackles. “Oh, fuck yeah. We need prayer for what we’re doing.”
“My grandfather always did warn me that the Great Ring could never forgive homosexuality,” Lucia reminisces.
“Mine said that too. Mind you, he definitely was fucking his ‘best friend.’ And loudly.”
“Everyone needs a little gay sex.”
Yes. Of course. Everyone. I need it too. I want it too. Just a little. And just a little later than now.