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The Final Days of Lan'ka: Ancient Memories
- The Final Days of Lan'ka: Ancient Memories -
I could hear the sounds of rushing water, growing louder and louder... and my head was hurting, my body aching, my soul screaming on inside of me. “Gislu! Gislu! Hurry to me, Gislu!” a woman's voice called... and tears were streaming down my face. I could not speak, I could not find the heart to voice words fit for the moment. The painful moment. As if all I ever knew was pain, and as if pain were all I would yet know. The place was dark, filled with pipes through which fluids were being pumped. Wires and over a thousand times a thousand pieces of machinery were attached to the long damp hallways and corridors through which I had to keep running. “I cannot go home... never again!” I kept thinking. “The road is closed... and those who keep it now will never let me pass.” One month previous, I was alright... I felt good, healthy and well. Loved and content. But now... I was someone else entirely. I was a child again... and I could never dare to hope for a return to my grown up self. I clutched a piece of pink and blue cloth in my hand. Where had I come by it? “It was my own... in the old times before.” I just kept remembering, while remembering nothing else. “Gislu!” that was my name... MY name, not that of my family. I was named after somebody important. But that was a lifetime ago. I was about forty five years old at that time. But mentally, I was a child. Something made me that way, scarred my soul. And my body too. I felt a long dark scar that ran from my back, along my left ribs, and across the front of my body, across my abdomen, ending just before my right ribs. A long, curving, serpentine scar. And it hurt like fire, like venom in my blood. Somebody had done this to me. But I could no longer remember.
The sky was filled with dark, black clouds, and it was late afternoon. The sky had a fiery tinge to it, which made the heavy scents of factories even harder to bear. “Such a long way from New Corinthia, the capital of the civilized worlds!” I mused silently to myself as I emerged from the underground, up the ladder that bridged the world above to the one below. And I feared I would never see that distant paradise again. Why did I wish to? I could not say... I only knew it was something I had to do. I had to go there, at all costs. The woman who had been calling my name, had escaped my view a long time ago and now I was even more lost than previously. The towering buildings with their angular, brutally hard designs, a hundred dim windows hiding a hundred miseries. I knew this place! It was the quarter where the workers and slaves lived. I did not belong there... I had to keep moving, lest some evil fate overtake me. A song kept playing in my head... one there were no words to. A classical, instrumental piece that was played on the kinesetara, a type of keyboard capable of synthesizing over five hundred instruments of varying descriptions. I could play that device well. I used to play that song! I could play it even now, to this very day, and I could play it a hundred times a thousand lifetimes into the future if I wished to. It was called “The Dancing Duchess”. And every time I heard that song or played it, it made me cry. I did not know why it did so. Not at the time anyway. But this time... someone else was playing it. I followed the sound, down back alleyways and side streets. Above me, the vertical sprawl of the city was just as monstrous in size as the horizontal spread of it all about. Neon lights were everywhere. Shops, bars, and private homes alike all sported their own designs. I had a blade at my side... but I could remember if it was mine or not. Something happened to me... something terrible. But the song called me forward.
Large vehicles hummed across the monorails high above. I missed the birdsong of the gardens of the palace districts. I saw her again... the woman who had been calling me. “Gislu! Come... this way...” she called in a beautiful but slightly rough sounding voice. It was she who had been singing that song. Or rather, humming it since it was without words. She disappeared into a doorway up ahead of me... with the sign of a librarian hanging above it. The music was playing much louder inside, on real instruments. And it seemed there was a gathering within. Cheering, laughing, the sounds of glasses clinking. Not at all what typically resounded from a library. I stepped inside, eager to discover the truth I was seeking.
About two dozen people were having a party within the library. All were short, bald and hairless, and wore diaphanous white and red robes, dresses, and gowns of gauzy design with black bodysuits beneath them. Every one, genetically engineered from birth to be subservient to the ruling classes who governed this world. Upon each shaved head was either a circlet or a tattoo that marked each man and woman's trade. Such were the workers and slaves of this quarter of the city. They reminded me of children... and I felt sometimes at home with them. Sometimes. I looked all about for the woman I had been following, but so nobody like her there, at least at first. The music was indeed playing that I had heard from out in the alleyways. “Excuse me, but may I ask please... what is that song the musicians are playing?” I made certain to inquire this of one of the servants. “It is called the Dancing Duchess, of course! Everybody in this quarter of the city knows it fully by heart. You should also know it, my Count!” and I remembered at that moment, that I was indeed of noble blood and birth. “Does it have a meaning?” I asked further, and the servant replied: “It did once, long ago... but no book here tells of it any longer. It was on your father's orders that it the knowledge was excised and special substances were introduced into all of the peoples' food and drink to make them forget just this. I do not know how that was accomplished, but all of a sudden no one remembered the old history regarding that song's meaning. And so we keep playing it every year around this time of year... in hopes that we will remember it at last. And it was at that odd moment that I saw the woman again... towards the back by the distant rows of book and scroll shelves. “Excuse me... I must go.” I said to the servant and went to meet the woman. She was flesh and blood, sure enough, with curly red hair, dusky colored skin and a freckled face. She was a teenager, but I was not sure of her exact age. She wore a black leotard with a transparent red gown over it with large puffy sleeves, tied at the waist with a gold cord. The attire of a prostitute. “Gislu! You are here at last.” she stated, and bowed low before me. “Do you want to learn the truth your father hides from everyone... and from you especially?” she asked, and I replied: “Yes! I very much do.” and she placed her right palm upon my forehead before intoning: “Good! It won't fix you completely... but it will help you to do what is right, or at least to decide for yourself what that means. Come with me.” and she took me by the hand, down some dark stairs and into the library's under-halls, where the secret books and tomes were said to be kept. “They can change our memories with chemicals, but they cannot erase what was writ of long ago. All they can do, is hide the truth away... but the truth has a nasty habit of coming back again!” And that is what she told me as she led me along, down into the secret chambers even I had not seen.
“Who are you?” I asked the girl. “Gislu... don't you...? I mean, you DO own me, you know! In pretty much every sense of the word. And all that such implies! Why, just last week, you...” and I explained to her that I could not at present remember anything prior to a few days ago. She seemed to understand all that was happened, even if I did not. “I see! Your father must have gassed you with the chemicals that make people forget things. I have an antidote that works for anything that was administered to someone within a month's time. It won't work for what they've been slipping to us for years, but it WILL fix what he did to you. Here... hold still!” and she took out of a pouch at her belt cord a syringe filled with some sort of green liquid. She had me roll up one of my sleeves and then she injected me with the odd fluid. “There may me some side effects later... but within two days time, you will fully remember everything. Including why your father would do this to his own child! I suspect you will be very angry about it all.” And then we resumed our way below. Through a distant archway, past a locked gate the girl had a key for, and into a vast circular chamber lined with thousands of shelves all filled with many written works.
“There will be no going back after this, for either of us! This is technically a kind of treason... but it needs to be done. My father... he knew of a certain ancient book. He told me where and how to find it. We will need that book, and all that it contains. Your mother... would have wanting it to be this way.”
“Will I remember... about us?” I asked the girl. She blushed, before stuttering a bit before saying: “A part of me hopes so... but a part of me hopes not. In any case... let us see about that book now.” and she brought out a light globe and placed it on the floor. It emitted a green light like a flare. In a far corner of the massive vaulted room, there was a statue of a tall woman holding a spear. She wore golden armor and had a mechanical left arm. I walked over to the statue... it looked hauntingly familiar to me. “Do you know who she was?” I asked my companion. “No, I do not! Strange... you know, I have been all over this part of the city, and never once before today have I laid my eyes upon that statue or any other bearing its' likeness.” At the foot of the statue was a golden chest locked with a complex mechanism. The girl's eyes darted to it fixedly. “That is what my father described to me! Come, help me open it.” And we worked upon the chest with a batch of tools that the girl had in the purse she had slung over her shoulder. The girl walked me through what to do, and I helped her to do as she instructed. For it took two of us to get the lock to give way and to open the lid of the massive chest. It was massive enough, to contain a human body! Jets of air rushed out as the lid was cast backward, hitting the statue behind it with an audible clanging sound. Within the chest was a book and a long spear tipped with an emerald green dagger-like point. The girl removed the point from the spear and placed both it and the book into her purse. The book was not large, about the size of a personal journal, bound in plain black leather. We then placed the lid back unto the chest and re-locked it with the girl's tools. “They never check the contents of the chest... they believe it will remain sealed forever. No one will ever know we have what it contained.” the girl explained, before adding: “Now come along, Gislu! We need to get away... fast.”
It was several weeks later... I had recovered my memories, but my childlike mental processes were not going away. I was anxious to restore my previous intelligence, and I spoke to my paramour about this. I remembered her name at last, it was Jinmar Haletri. The daughter of an off-world worker who had been brought to our planet as an indentured slave, whose family owed my own a massive debt that he could not pay. His daughter was immediately sold into slavery as a personal courtesan. Basically, a prostitute. To save her from a vile fate as such, I purchased her to be my personal pleasure slave and that is what she was to me at first. Over time, I came to love her deeply, even though we could never marry due to her low birth. On this particular day, I was lying upon a couch in her chambers while she massaged my body to remove the aches and pains that still had not abated since the incident that had caused me to flee into the tunnels. The apartment was spacious, and I had purchased it for her personal use... it was opulent, magnificent, fit for royalty. And my father knew nothing of it! I kept it just for my darling Jinmar. And it had become a personal refuge for me, when I wanted to escape the world. I had NOT been so fond of the girl's father, who hated me with a vengeance. He wanted to escape our world at all costs in the literal sense, and so he looked at me as part of my home planet's various problems and injustices. But his daughter saw in me all that her father was blind to... and so she was kind and gentle and passionate to me, whereas her bitter and hateful father would have plunged a blade into my heart if he could have. If the slave collar that he wore allowed him even the slightest freedom to do so without running the risk of it leaking deadly poison into his skin should he even contemplate violence against a member of any of the noble families. It was linked directly into his brain via neural sensors, and it had the means to know should even the slightest treasonous thoughts enter into said brain. It was cruel and yet efficient method to ensure the docility of hostile servants. I did not agree with it, but I could never hope to change it. Our society was incapable of changing.... which was why I longed to go away, to go to New Corinthia. My mother's old home world. I had not seen it since early childhood, and I longed for it with all of my heart and soul. Jinmar kissed me upon my forehead. “Done, dear one! Now, let us have a look at that book we stole, shall we? Now that your memory is back and you are feeling at least a bit better.” she was through with the massage, and I was anxious to discovery what was hidden from me.
It was a certain family history... my mother's family, in fact, going all the way back to New Corinthia and further back to an ancient royal dynasty of old Ra'qia. From the days when the Holy Planet was still green and lush and filled with teeming life in all of life's diversity. The book was, fortunately, written in the language of our planet and its' peoples... the dominant language that is, the one that both Jinmar and I spoke and understood, and could read. A language brought from our planet to Ra'qia in the past times beyond the memory of recorded history. One page in particular caught my eye... and this is what was at the very top-most segment of it, in thick ink: “Being the story, the life and darkest tragedy, of the Grand Duchess Gisline Too'kathtoo Lei'oola-Xectae, Matriarch of the noble House of Osryl. May we not ever forget what befell her! May such things never happen again.” This woman, Gisline, had been one of my more illustrious ancestors. She had ruled the planet Ra'qia as supreme Planetary Governess in the days when only a very small coalition of kingdoms had come together from out of the planet New Corinthia to rule the known galaxy. There was no Imperium of Worlds as of yet (in Gisline's time that is), and so the rules of conduct for governed worlds were very loose and open to individual interpretation. She had a truly magnificent palace built on Ra'qia in the Tabar region (a region of the most ancient antiquities), with crystal domes and soaring minarets of silver and gold, with gardens containing glorious fountains, tall palm trees, and plants and flowers and blossom trees of nearly every description. She loved those gardens more than even her subjects (whom she adored), and she had the gardens extended until they surrounded the whole palace... and, to keep them all pristine she had massive walls of sandstone raised around the whole of it. So tall and massive was the palace and even these did not hide its' glory from view even close by. From far away, it was a heavenly sight! Slaves were brought in to tend the gardens, conscripted from all across the worlds of the known galaxy of those days. In the beginning, they were happy to work in so lovely a place, and were treated with love, kindness, and dignity. That was said to be the Golden Age of Ra'qia and it was never to attain so grand a state again. Gisline was in this work described as beautiful, powerful, and glamorous... a celebrity of sorts and a patron of the arts, especially music. She could play the kinesetara totally by ear, needing no notes to go by, and she composed her own symphonies, playing them for her servants and slaves. Her concerts were grand events, and people came from all over Ra'qia to enjoy them. Those were all peaceful years, but soon that was to change.
There came unto Gisline's court one day, a very ancient priest of the Faceless Order, from the distant deserts which were said to be encroaching upon the green of the planet more and more every day. He bowed before her throne, but spoke in a way that was brash and cold. He produced a green orb from his robe and cast it before the throne, and this is what he told the Grand Duchess herself: “Your people did come unto our world from the outer worlds far beyond, and you did not ask us if we wished for guests. You dug in the deserts for the resources therein, and you mined in the mountains for gems and gold to adorn your palaces and power your void-traveling vessels of steel. You did not ask permission to do all of these things! You came, you claimed to rule, and you took from the land without giving back to it. You create beautiful gardens but hide them behind walls, you take the water from the soil but every day it grows more scarce. We know the secrets of our planet's waters, but you did not ask us of this. Since you never asked us anything... you will not help you now. We will keep all knowledge of the hidden waters a secret, and when all is desert you will beg us for this! And we will not give it. For you take what is the planet's and call savage the ones who are most in tune with the planet's life-force. But take this gift, this orb! Over time, it will reveal and bring out more evidently the true character of the one who holds it in both hands and binds their will unto it. Will you not accept this? We give it willingly! Which is more than you and your kind have ever given us.” and Gisline took the orb into both of her palms and brought her will to bear upon it. “I bind my will upon it!” she spoke, and smiled sweetly before ordering the messenger to depart in peace. “I will not repay your hostility, with more hostility!”
And, those words she spoke would come to be considered ironic with time. One day, while she was in the palace's auditorium composing her latest song, “The Dancing Duchess”, someone had rushed in to inform the Grand Duchess that a group of people from the desert had somehow gotten past the palace's outer walls... and they had set fire to her gardens. She rushed out to see them, shrieking with rage and weeping tears like a little child would be. “My flowers! My trees! My gardens! Who would do such a thing? Who! Tell me. Bring them to me at once! Guards... find them, and put them to the sword. This is a crime against nature itself, and it shall be punished as such! It shall be punished as such!” and the fire was so all-consuming that it could not be put out. The island the palace was built upon was reachable only by three bridges which linked the island to the capital city. That left only three ways the arsonists could have come or gone. But how could they have breached the wall? There was no damage to it, and only one gate which was guarded and watched over by the groundskeepers and servants. Only a single possibility remained... there was a traitor, who let the desert people in. But no one would speak of this, and everyone denied responsibility... for they knew that Gisline would surely have the guilty party put to death for such a deed. She danced around the palace madly, painting her face and body with wavy pink and blue lines, humming “The Dancing Duchess” as she clutched the strange orb in both hands. It glowed with a faint green radiance, the more she held it. She kept crying, sometimes for days on end... and humming like a little girl might. One day, she grew impatient with the search for the arsonists and those who let unto into the gardens to start with... and she began to question the servants herself. Very sweetly, she asked them in a singsong voice: “Wherever are the ones who took my flowers? Where are the ones who burned my trees! Tell me... or I will take what you love the most from you, should I find you to be the one responsible.” But nobody would confess, and so Gisline ordered whole groups of the servants to be rounded up, and several of the guards and groundskeepers with them. All were brought to the auditorium, where Gisline played her song for them upon the kinesetara. When she had finished, she danced again before producing a long spear with an emerald green dagger mounted upon the end of it. She began by running it through the belly of one of the servants, twisting it viciously as she did so. All the while, humming her song. “Show me the one who is guilty. Produce those who burned all my gardens. Or... show me death!” she cried, withdrawing the spear while glaring at still another servant. All of those present were bound hand and foot before her. But they could speak, and still they refused to give up the guilty parties. She slew them horribly, one after another, until only one remained... one of the gate guards on duty the day of the fire. He spat at the Grand Duchess, hissing: “It was I who did the deed... I, who let the desert people in! And I was not acting alone. Many of your servants were with me, for we tire of your childish rule and long for a stronger ruler to take your place. You will never know who is a traitor and who is not. Never, shall you rest peacefully again... never, shall you play your silly, stupid music without wondering if someone in your audience has a blade with your blood intended for it. Kill me, Child Queen of Ra'qia! For child you are in heart and mind, though long past such innocent years are you in body. And now, child... you have killed! For the first time, I would imagine. How does it feel? For your innocence dies with us on this day.” and Gisline wept, held the man tightly, and said to him simply: “I loved you all... why is innocence a crime to you? Why... do you want... violence!” and all the man would do is reply without emotion saying: “We need stronger rule.” And something began to snap in the mind of the Grand Duchess. She screamed, and the orb that was never far from her was blazing with emerald light. This is what she screamed: “If you hate a child so much, fine then! I will BE the kind of ruler you all desire. I will show you... my true strength! What I have kept in check all these many years.” and she pierced the guard's throat with the spear, crying as she did so, tears smearing her makeup and body paint. “I will sing and dance, as I become the ruler this world wishes for! Now, to find people to dance and sing with...” and she stormed out of the auditorium, with a fire in her heart. The golden age that had begun with her rule... was about to come to a catastrophic, and very final end.
It is said that she thereafter killed all of her servants, ordering the remaining guards to execute the lot of them unto the very last one. She then conscripted a whole new order of knights that she thus deemed “The Golden Knights of the Burning Rose”, named in honor of her lost garden and its' flowers. All of them were required to prove their loyalty by undergoing an operation to ensure their sterility. The males also had to consent to be made into eunuchs. In this way... she was sure, she could trust them with her very life. For with fanaticism, she could be certain of loyalty. She had the knights slaughter the guards who has previously executed the servants, and when all of this was done, she declared war upon all the peoples of the desert. In the course of that war, she lost her left arm and had it replaced by a mechanical arm made of golden metal that was actually of a strong steel-like alloy. It was a bloody affair, and it led to a civil war among the people still loyal to the Grand Duchess. Half agreed that the war was just, for the heart of the duchess was inconsolable with grief from the loss of her garden. And half still argued that the war was petty and vengeful and needed to come to an end. But the desert people would never relent in their aggression against the House of Osryl, for their hatred of all who were from off planet originally made them fanatical in their own way. Eventually, the governing body of the civilized worlds of the united galaxy sent an army to bring order to the strife on Ra'qia and the use of atomic weapons was authorized. The planet was bombarded until nothing green remained upon it. The desert people all went into hiding underground, and Gisline retreated to a bunker beneath the palace, and the world that lay above became a desolation. Order had indeed come to the Holy Planet... but at what cost! Years did pass until planetary scientists were sent to do away with the remaining radiation (for their science was advanced enough back then to do this, although the means was lost to antiquity)... and a new Planetary Governor was to be sent to replace Gisline. House Osryl was considered disgraced and stricken from all histories thereafter. The orb Gisline carried, she carried still when her last remaining fanatically loyal servants executed her at her own request. “I want to be with my flowers.” she requested. “I want to see them again!” she demanded. And they sent her to them, with tears in their eyes as well as hers. As the legend goes, in the instant of her death, as her most loyal knight beheaded her... the green orb emitted a bright emerald glow like never before. Once the duchess was dead, the knight cut a scrap of her dress and kept the cloth to remember her by. The cloth was kept by Gisline's descendants, to remember her beauty for all of time (for only a single statue remains of her... and no paintings... and that statue was hidden away on the ancestral home world of House Osryl, from the days before that house moved its' seat of power and authority to New Corinthia. The name of that world was not given, in order so that no one might ever deface the statue carved in the Grand Duchess' likeness. That was how her tale ended.
“So... that is whose dress scrap I have been holding unto since I fled father's palace.” I stated. And Jinmar looked on through the book, studying it intently for hours as I waited for her to complete this study. When it was complete, the courtesan closed the book and looked at me worriedly. “What is it?” I asked her, and she replied, her voice shaking a bit. “It seems that there is a genetic family madness in your ancestral blood... and that the green orb actually brought it out in Duchess Gisline.” I asked Jinmar to be more specific. “What triggers it, does it say?” I inquired. She replied, hesitantly: “The loss of a person's childlike innocence... typically, when something they love above all else is threatened or taken away from them.” I thought about all that I remembered since the antidote had run its' course... of how my father had murdered my mother right before my very eyes, and vowed to disown me due to a thing I could never have hoped to help... I had been born partially female. Externally... I had fully functioning male genitalia... but, I possessed various physical traits of all different sorts that were unique solely to females. His hurtful words to my mother still echoed in my mind, stabbing me through my heart: “I told you only to give me a boy! A male heir to the house of Lan'ka... and what do you give me instead? This child-witted fool who is more woman than man! You are just utterly worthless to me... both of you.”
“You are no son of mine!” he had shouted at me, looking right in my eyes as he strangled my mother to death while the guards held me back from helping her. I got free of their grasp, too late to save her, and my father sprayed me with some sort of chemical from an object he held that I could not see. I had to run, to get away, as the guards chased me. Death or exile would be too much to bear, and so I ran... what happened next was hazy. I found a chamber in the palace containing my mother's belongings. The scrap of my ancestor's dress... my mother's greatest treasure... I had to make sure father would not seek to destroy it. So I took it and ran. And now here I was, in my own self-imposed exile contemplating the prospect of what to do next. I spoke of all this to Jinmar, and she said to me quite honestly: “You need to face your father, Gislu, and put a stop to him... he keeps oppressing the people and robbing us of our very history. He is a bigot, a racist, and a monster. And... if this continues... we will ALL of us lose the things we love the most.” We spent a few days planning things after that, and through her networks of contacts Jinmar found a powerful, honorable patron for our insurrection. This was actually how I first came to meet Baroness Cyndijaz Megg of House Hara'kaon. She was a native of our world, Gehenna Primus, and a longtime rival of my family, House Lan'ka. Never quite an enemy though, just a bit on the competitive side. However, the Baroness made no secret of her disgust of and hatred for my father himself. She had, on numerous occasions, stated that I would have turned out better had I been brought up in House Hara'kaon... and my heart was now drawn to that very notion more and more. “The house of Lan'ka falls this month!” I vowed to Jinmar, thinking it would take that long to bring this to fruition. Of course, I still had to meet with the Baroness. Once I did so, that would come to change everything.
The room was jet black, with red and gold trim, and shaven-headed servants brought forth golden platters piled high with food. Fruits, vegetables, and sweet delicacies. These were presented to both I and Jinmar with something of a flourish as we sat at the dining table before us. At its' head was a very imposing woman with hair as red as an apple, held up in a magnificent coiffure by ornate golden cones. She wore a transparent black and red gown that did little to hide her large form, under which she wore a rather loose-fitting red and gold top paired with voluminous pantaloons of a precisely matching color scheme. Both were embroidered with flame-like designs all across the fabric. She wore gilded bracelets and a magnificent ruby necklace with a bright gold chain. Her earrings... naturally... were ruby as well. Various rings adorned her fingers, one of which was her house's signet ring. She was a very big woman in every sense of the word... and her generosity and ambition were widely renowned. People looked to her as a bit of a savior in recent years... at least in the political sense. I wondered if the woman herself matched this view, or if her ostentation was closer to the truth of her nature. She spoke in a cultured, well-mannered voice a bit on the deep side for a woman: “Count Gislu Ra'vann... of House Lan'ka.... at least until today. I never thought that I would be having you of all people over for supper! Welcome. As I understand it, they say you are somewhat childlike in certain ways. And a hermaphrodite as well? It is alright, you can admit to these things in my presence. Unlike your father... I will never judge you for it! Instead, I would be totally willing to adopt you into our house once your father is dead. Yes... dead. We must see to that, naturally! And, you would mean as much to me I suspect as my younger sister Caleo. Although you are, I must admit, a great deal older than she is indeed. Even so! I will act in deference to your mental state, which I again assure you I will never judge you for. One cannot help having certain... disorders, sometimes. Yours, at least, I can only assume you were born with. Mine... was inflicted upon me. But we are not here to talk about me! Let us discuss the future of our world and how to fix things.”
She was sickly and hiding it quite well... and as we talked further I sensed she knew that I understood such pain. At one point, as we plotted and planned what was to come... she stood up, walked on over to me with the aid of a gilded cane, and put her other hand on my shoulder comfortingly. Just as a mother.
It began with a fire at my father's refineries and factories. He never saw it coming, and by the time he scrambled enough people to respond to it... Cyndijaz Megg had ordered massive airships of her house to move in and firebomb the sites until they were burning slabs of twisted and charred metal. The smell of burning chemicals filled the night air, and massive green noxious clouds were incinerated during the course of the inferno that followed. Soon, an overwhelming number of ground troops were deployed... and all my father's forces were hopelessly outnumbered. Cyndijaz Megg had been mobilizing an army in countless numbers while my father became increasingly complacent and secure in his power all these decades long. It was about to cost him everything! Whole sections of the city caught fire and burned... and ever after that fateful night, the House Hara'kaon became known as the House of Fire. My father's large stable of slaves were all set free at once by Megg's forces, and the former servants rebelled against him with newfound zeal when they saw that I was with them... and not with him. I was on the frontlines of this battle, while Jinmar stayed behind with Megg in her floating command fortress high above the city skyline, from which she could observe all that transpired below. It was the end for House Lan'ka. People had called it a “house of demons” and now there was one demon working for the cause of true righteousness. That demon was I, as I fell upon my father's forces without mercy, slaughtering them in great numbers with a red-bladed shock-sword given to me by the Baroness I now served. I stormed into the vaults of my father's palace, a hundred fighting men and women behind me, along with freed slaves in numbers far greater still. There was something I needed to fetch from my mother's chambers before facing my father... and so I ran up the winding metal stairs to the tower that had been her home for so long ere that evil man took her away from me. Everything had been left exactly as it had been when she was alive, nothing removed or changed in any way whatsoever! I found her jewelry box, about the size of a footlocker, and in it I found the green sphere that had belonged once to the Grand Duchess Gisline in another age out of old legends. My namesake, for Gislu was the gender neutral variant of Gisline! I clutched the orb in my left hand, holding my sword in my right... but first, I put the blade down and cupped it in both hands, willing with all my mental strength for the artifact to accept me. It glowed with a green light, and I knew that it did. I picked up my weapon again and stormed out like an angry beast.
The palace gardens were burning... I did not blame the righteous mob that set them ablaze. They only wanted their freedom, having been oppressed for far, far too long! I blamed the evil man who oppressed them, who so poisoned them and kept them from their very pasts. The man who had sought to erase the very existence of my noblest ancestor Gisline. I would see to it at long last, that she was remembered... and never forgotten again, for all of time! I was skipping through the halls of the palace, humming for all to hear the melodic tune of “The Dancing Duchess”... as I cut men down with a bloody fury the likes of which they had never seen in me before. I gave myself wholly over to Gisline's memory, to her very legend, and I felt her spirit within me. I was her. I felt all the pain, all the anguish, she had known in her tragic life. Never again! Never again would they forget me. Were they my words? Hers? I knew not, but I knew only that I wanted this war to end, and at the end of it... a brighter future for Gehenna Primus.
The orb was blazing with emerald light when the throne room's doors were thrown open after being battered nearly to breaking by the siege devices Megg's forces employed. I was first to rush into the vast chamber beyond, with its' dull green and gold walls emblazoned as they were with images of hideous creatures and beasts from long-lost lore. My father had no guards left... he had ordered them all out to defend his palace, and they were all dead in bloody heaps all throughout. The cowardly man stood like a fool behind his throne, clutching it as if it would save his pathetic life. “No son... no son of mine!” he shouted at me. I smiled cruelly, stating in response: “No son at all! I am Gisline of House Osryl... and this is MY hour of revenge! Prepare to join the flowers of the gardens, that burn now because of you.”
I threw Gisline's dagger at him, producing it from a hidden sheathe in one of my boots. As I hoped, he panicked and broke out of cover from behind the throne. He was totally unarmed... just as my mother had been when he strangled the life out of her, and took one of the things I loved the most from me in all the universe. His death would be just payment for such a deed! The orb was by now in a pouch at my belt. I picked up the dagger from the floor where it had tumbled and I rammed it into my father's stomach. Not enough to kill him... not yet. And I even told him this! “Not yet! You will not die yet... not until you know the terror my mother felt at your hands.” He was bleeding, doubling over winded. Not even word came from his mouth. “Nothing to say, old man? Fine with me!” and I set my sword aside, taking the man's neck into my hands. “Mad... you're a madman!” he gurgled at me. “Ah, but do you not remember, 'father'? I am not a man at all! I was always more woman than man, you said. I am no longer simply your child. I was NEVER your child! Only my mother's. I am the Grand Duchess Gisline Osryl! And you tried to erase me from existence. But I was always right here, the whole time! Right under tour nose. I kicked the man over unto the floor and took out the glowing green orb. It was actually hot to the touch. “I thought... that was destroyed... long ago.” he spat, holding his throat and rubbing it. “You cannot destroy me! But I... I can destroy you.” I said to him, my voice no longer my own but that of the long-dead duchess Gisline. My eyes were glowing green from holding the orb, and I could see things in other planes, on other realities. I was losing myself more and more in this moment. A timeless moment! I kicked the dagger deeper into my father's belly. He shrieked like a stuck pig. It was a fitting moment for such a pig of a man. “Let me send you to meet my beloved flowers... in Hell!” I shouted to him, picking up my sword and striking it so deeply into him via his left shoulder that he was nearly bisected from the blow. “Not yet!” I said again, choking the man with all the rage I had held back for all the years he had tormented me. “Not yet! Not yet!” I screamed, again and again. He was very dead by this point, his eyes bulging and bloody from me strangling him and beating him about the face over and over again, his tongue sticking out from between his teeth, which had nearly bitten it off from the force of my blows. Suddenly... a little girl was standing behind me... one of the freed slaves. “Please stop! Don't get lost in your rage.” she said. I let my father's corpse tumble to the ground and I dropped the green orb to the floor next to it. My sword was permanently embedded in the man's body. The emerald light was gone, the orb gone dark. I was myself again... Gisline was gone. “It is over.” I said, and I held the little girl in my arms and began to sob. There was blood all over my hands, all over me, and I got some on the child's white garments. “I am sorry.” I said to her about that. I was crying for my mother, who was at last now able to rest in peace. Crying, holding that child... and trying to forget.
Cyndijaz Megg became the absolute ruler of the entire planet of Gehenna Primus, after that. She had won the hearts and minds of the people during the fall of House Lan'ka, and I was adopted into her own house as promised. Jinmar became my royal consort, but I was still not allowed to marry her due to her not being of noble birth. I was instead betrothed to the little girl who had snapped me back to my senses in my father's throne room on that fateful night. For, despite her having been kept a slave in my father's house, the child was in fact of noble birth... the long-lost princess of the House of Aeros, whose parents were a great king and queen on the Imperial home world of New Corinthia. It was they who insisted on the marriage... for they felt indebted to me for the girl's rescue from servitude. The little girl's name was Sciopia Ximmsia, but I gave her the nickname of “Sapphira” due to her sparkling blue eyes. Now that she was no longer a slave, she was allowed to grow out her hair... and I found it to be a most beautiful shade of golden blonde. I gave her the old green orb of Gisline as a present, but I cautioned her to keep it always in a glass case and never to hold it in both hands, only ever in just one, and to never, ever turn her will upon it. Within the case, the ancient scrap of Gisline's dress lay beneath the orb... and, in this way, my ancient ancestor would rest in peace, assured of being remembered. A new age... had begun!
I could hear the sounds of rushing water, growing louder and louder... and my head was hurting, my body aching, my soul screaming on inside of me. “Gislu! Gislu! Hurry to me, Gislu!” a woman's voice called... and tears were streaming down my face. I could not speak, I could not find the heart to voice words fit for the moment. The painful moment. As if all I ever knew was pain, and as if pain were all I would yet know. The place was dark, filled with pipes through which fluids were being pumped. Wires and over a thousand times a thousand pieces of machinery were attached to the long damp hallways and corridors through which I had to keep running. “I cannot go home... never again!” I kept thinking. “The road is closed... and those who keep it now will never let me pass.” One month previous, I was alright... I felt good, healthy and well. Loved and content. But now... I was someone else entirely. I was a child again... and I could never dare to hope for a return to my grown up self. I clutched a piece of pink and blue cloth in my hand. Where had I come by it? “It was my own... in the old times before.” I just kept remembering, while remembering nothing else. “Gislu!” that was my name... MY name, not that of my family. I was named after somebody important. But that was a lifetime ago. I was about forty five years old at that time. But mentally, I was a child. Something made me that way, scarred my soul. And my body too. I felt a long dark scar that ran from my back, along my left ribs, and across the front of my body, across my abdomen, ending just before my right ribs. A long, curving, serpentine scar. And it hurt like fire, like venom in my blood. Somebody had done this to me. But I could no longer remember.
The sky was filled with dark, black clouds, and it was late afternoon. The sky had a fiery tinge to it, which made the heavy scents of factories even harder to bear. “Such a long way from New Corinthia, the capital of the civilized worlds!” I mused silently to myself as I emerged from the underground, up the ladder that bridged the world above to the one below. And I feared I would never see that distant paradise again. Why did I wish to? I could not say... I only knew it was something I had to do. I had to go there, at all costs. The woman who had been calling my name, had escaped my view a long time ago and now I was even more lost than previously. The towering buildings with their angular, brutally hard designs, a hundred dim windows hiding a hundred miseries. I knew this place! It was the quarter where the workers and slaves lived. I did not belong there... I had to keep moving, lest some evil fate overtake me. A song kept playing in my head... one there were no words to. A classical, instrumental piece that was played on the kinesetara, a type of keyboard capable of synthesizing over five hundred instruments of varying descriptions. I could play that device well. I used to play that song! I could play it even now, to this very day, and I could play it a hundred times a thousand lifetimes into the future if I wished to. It was called “The Dancing Duchess”. And every time I heard that song or played it, it made me cry. I did not know why it did so. Not at the time anyway. But this time... someone else was playing it. I followed the sound, down back alleyways and side streets. Above me, the vertical sprawl of the city was just as monstrous in size as the horizontal spread of it all about. Neon lights were everywhere. Shops, bars, and private homes alike all sported their own designs. I had a blade at my side... but I could remember if it was mine or not. Something happened to me... something terrible. But the song called me forward.
Large vehicles hummed across the monorails high above. I missed the birdsong of the gardens of the palace districts. I saw her again... the woman who had been calling me. “Gislu! Come... this way...” she called in a beautiful but slightly rough sounding voice. It was she who had been singing that song. Or rather, humming it since it was without words. She disappeared into a doorway up ahead of me... with the sign of a librarian hanging above it. The music was playing much louder inside, on real instruments. And it seemed there was a gathering within. Cheering, laughing, the sounds of glasses clinking. Not at all what typically resounded from a library. I stepped inside, eager to discover the truth I was seeking.
About two dozen people were having a party within the library. All were short, bald and hairless, and wore diaphanous white and red robes, dresses, and gowns of gauzy design with black bodysuits beneath them. Every one, genetically engineered from birth to be subservient to the ruling classes who governed this world. Upon each shaved head was either a circlet or a tattoo that marked each man and woman's trade. Such were the workers and slaves of this quarter of the city. They reminded me of children... and I felt sometimes at home with them. Sometimes. I looked all about for the woman I had been following, but so nobody like her there, at least at first. The music was indeed playing that I had heard from out in the alleyways. “Excuse me, but may I ask please... what is that song the musicians are playing?” I made certain to inquire this of one of the servants. “It is called the Dancing Duchess, of course! Everybody in this quarter of the city knows it fully by heart. You should also know it, my Count!” and I remembered at that moment, that I was indeed of noble blood and birth. “Does it have a meaning?” I asked further, and the servant replied: “It did once, long ago... but no book here tells of it any longer. It was on your father's orders that it the knowledge was excised and special substances were introduced into all of the peoples' food and drink to make them forget just this. I do not know how that was accomplished, but all of a sudden no one remembered the old history regarding that song's meaning. And so we keep playing it every year around this time of year... in hopes that we will remember it at last. And it was at that odd moment that I saw the woman again... towards the back by the distant rows of book and scroll shelves. “Excuse me... I must go.” I said to the servant and went to meet the woman. She was flesh and blood, sure enough, with curly red hair, dusky colored skin and a freckled face. She was a teenager, but I was not sure of her exact age. She wore a black leotard with a transparent red gown over it with large puffy sleeves, tied at the waist with a gold cord. The attire of a prostitute. “Gislu! You are here at last.” she stated, and bowed low before me. “Do you want to learn the truth your father hides from everyone... and from you especially?” she asked, and I replied: “Yes! I very much do.” and she placed her right palm upon my forehead before intoning: “Good! It won't fix you completely... but it will help you to do what is right, or at least to decide for yourself what that means. Come with me.” and she took me by the hand, down some dark stairs and into the library's under-halls, where the secret books and tomes were said to be kept. “They can change our memories with chemicals, but they cannot erase what was writ of long ago. All they can do, is hide the truth away... but the truth has a nasty habit of coming back again!” And that is what she told me as she led me along, down into the secret chambers even I had not seen.
“Who are you?” I asked the girl. “Gislu... don't you...? I mean, you DO own me, you know! In pretty much every sense of the word. And all that such implies! Why, just last week, you...” and I explained to her that I could not at present remember anything prior to a few days ago. She seemed to understand all that was happened, even if I did not. “I see! Your father must have gassed you with the chemicals that make people forget things. I have an antidote that works for anything that was administered to someone within a month's time. It won't work for what they've been slipping to us for years, but it WILL fix what he did to you. Here... hold still!” and she took out of a pouch at her belt cord a syringe filled with some sort of green liquid. She had me roll up one of my sleeves and then she injected me with the odd fluid. “There may me some side effects later... but within two days time, you will fully remember everything. Including why your father would do this to his own child! I suspect you will be very angry about it all.” And then we resumed our way below. Through a distant archway, past a locked gate the girl had a key for, and into a vast circular chamber lined with thousands of shelves all filled with many written works.
“There will be no going back after this, for either of us! This is technically a kind of treason... but it needs to be done. My father... he knew of a certain ancient book. He told me where and how to find it. We will need that book, and all that it contains. Your mother... would have wanting it to be this way.”
“Will I remember... about us?” I asked the girl. She blushed, before stuttering a bit before saying: “A part of me hopes so... but a part of me hopes not. In any case... let us see about that book now.” and she brought out a light globe and placed it on the floor. It emitted a green light like a flare. In a far corner of the massive vaulted room, there was a statue of a tall woman holding a spear. She wore golden armor and had a mechanical left arm. I walked over to the statue... it looked hauntingly familiar to me. “Do you know who she was?” I asked my companion. “No, I do not! Strange... you know, I have been all over this part of the city, and never once before today have I laid my eyes upon that statue or any other bearing its' likeness.” At the foot of the statue was a golden chest locked with a complex mechanism. The girl's eyes darted to it fixedly. “That is what my father described to me! Come, help me open it.” And we worked upon the chest with a batch of tools that the girl had in the purse she had slung over her shoulder. The girl walked me through what to do, and I helped her to do as she instructed. For it took two of us to get the lock to give way and to open the lid of the massive chest. It was massive enough, to contain a human body! Jets of air rushed out as the lid was cast backward, hitting the statue behind it with an audible clanging sound. Within the chest was a book and a long spear tipped with an emerald green dagger-like point. The girl removed the point from the spear and placed both it and the book into her purse. The book was not large, about the size of a personal journal, bound in plain black leather. We then placed the lid back unto the chest and re-locked it with the girl's tools. “They never check the contents of the chest... they believe it will remain sealed forever. No one will ever know we have what it contained.” the girl explained, before adding: “Now come along, Gislu! We need to get away... fast.”
It was several weeks later... I had recovered my memories, but my childlike mental processes were not going away. I was anxious to restore my previous intelligence, and I spoke to my paramour about this. I remembered her name at last, it was Jinmar Haletri. The daughter of an off-world worker who had been brought to our planet as an indentured slave, whose family owed my own a massive debt that he could not pay. His daughter was immediately sold into slavery as a personal courtesan. Basically, a prostitute. To save her from a vile fate as such, I purchased her to be my personal pleasure slave and that is what she was to me at first. Over time, I came to love her deeply, even though we could never marry due to her low birth. On this particular day, I was lying upon a couch in her chambers while she massaged my body to remove the aches and pains that still had not abated since the incident that had caused me to flee into the tunnels. The apartment was spacious, and I had purchased it for her personal use... it was opulent, magnificent, fit for royalty. And my father knew nothing of it! I kept it just for my darling Jinmar. And it had become a personal refuge for me, when I wanted to escape the world. I had NOT been so fond of the girl's father, who hated me with a vengeance. He wanted to escape our world at all costs in the literal sense, and so he looked at me as part of my home planet's various problems and injustices. But his daughter saw in me all that her father was blind to... and so she was kind and gentle and passionate to me, whereas her bitter and hateful father would have plunged a blade into my heart if he could have. If the slave collar that he wore allowed him even the slightest freedom to do so without running the risk of it leaking deadly poison into his skin should he even contemplate violence against a member of any of the noble families. It was linked directly into his brain via neural sensors, and it had the means to know should even the slightest treasonous thoughts enter into said brain. It was cruel and yet efficient method to ensure the docility of hostile servants. I did not agree with it, but I could never hope to change it. Our society was incapable of changing.... which was why I longed to go away, to go to New Corinthia. My mother's old home world. I had not seen it since early childhood, and I longed for it with all of my heart and soul. Jinmar kissed me upon my forehead. “Done, dear one! Now, let us have a look at that book we stole, shall we? Now that your memory is back and you are feeling at least a bit better.” she was through with the massage, and I was anxious to discovery what was hidden from me.
It was a certain family history... my mother's family, in fact, going all the way back to New Corinthia and further back to an ancient royal dynasty of old Ra'qia. From the days when the Holy Planet was still green and lush and filled with teeming life in all of life's diversity. The book was, fortunately, written in the language of our planet and its' peoples... the dominant language that is, the one that both Jinmar and I spoke and understood, and could read. A language brought from our planet to Ra'qia in the past times beyond the memory of recorded history. One page in particular caught my eye... and this is what was at the very top-most segment of it, in thick ink: “Being the story, the life and darkest tragedy, of the Grand Duchess Gisline Too'kathtoo Lei'oola-Xectae, Matriarch of the noble House of Osryl. May we not ever forget what befell her! May such things never happen again.” This woman, Gisline, had been one of my more illustrious ancestors. She had ruled the planet Ra'qia as supreme Planetary Governess in the days when only a very small coalition of kingdoms had come together from out of the planet New Corinthia to rule the known galaxy. There was no Imperium of Worlds as of yet (in Gisline's time that is), and so the rules of conduct for governed worlds were very loose and open to individual interpretation. She had a truly magnificent palace built on Ra'qia in the Tabar region (a region of the most ancient antiquities), with crystal domes and soaring minarets of silver and gold, with gardens containing glorious fountains, tall palm trees, and plants and flowers and blossom trees of nearly every description. She loved those gardens more than even her subjects (whom she adored), and she had the gardens extended until they surrounded the whole palace... and, to keep them all pristine she had massive walls of sandstone raised around the whole of it. So tall and massive was the palace and even these did not hide its' glory from view even close by. From far away, it was a heavenly sight! Slaves were brought in to tend the gardens, conscripted from all across the worlds of the known galaxy of those days. In the beginning, they were happy to work in so lovely a place, and were treated with love, kindness, and dignity. That was said to be the Golden Age of Ra'qia and it was never to attain so grand a state again. Gisline was in this work described as beautiful, powerful, and glamorous... a celebrity of sorts and a patron of the arts, especially music. She could play the kinesetara totally by ear, needing no notes to go by, and she composed her own symphonies, playing them for her servants and slaves. Her concerts were grand events, and people came from all over Ra'qia to enjoy them. Those were all peaceful years, but soon that was to change.
There came unto Gisline's court one day, a very ancient priest of the Faceless Order, from the distant deserts which were said to be encroaching upon the green of the planet more and more every day. He bowed before her throne, but spoke in a way that was brash and cold. He produced a green orb from his robe and cast it before the throne, and this is what he told the Grand Duchess herself: “Your people did come unto our world from the outer worlds far beyond, and you did not ask us if we wished for guests. You dug in the deserts for the resources therein, and you mined in the mountains for gems and gold to adorn your palaces and power your void-traveling vessels of steel. You did not ask permission to do all of these things! You came, you claimed to rule, and you took from the land without giving back to it. You create beautiful gardens but hide them behind walls, you take the water from the soil but every day it grows more scarce. We know the secrets of our planet's waters, but you did not ask us of this. Since you never asked us anything... you will not help you now. We will keep all knowledge of the hidden waters a secret, and when all is desert you will beg us for this! And we will not give it. For you take what is the planet's and call savage the ones who are most in tune with the planet's life-force. But take this gift, this orb! Over time, it will reveal and bring out more evidently the true character of the one who holds it in both hands and binds their will unto it. Will you not accept this? We give it willingly! Which is more than you and your kind have ever given us.” and Gisline took the orb into both of her palms and brought her will to bear upon it. “I bind my will upon it!” she spoke, and smiled sweetly before ordering the messenger to depart in peace. “I will not repay your hostility, with more hostility!”
And, those words she spoke would come to be considered ironic with time. One day, while she was in the palace's auditorium composing her latest song, “The Dancing Duchess”, someone had rushed in to inform the Grand Duchess that a group of people from the desert had somehow gotten past the palace's outer walls... and they had set fire to her gardens. She rushed out to see them, shrieking with rage and weeping tears like a little child would be. “My flowers! My trees! My gardens! Who would do such a thing? Who! Tell me. Bring them to me at once! Guards... find them, and put them to the sword. This is a crime against nature itself, and it shall be punished as such! It shall be punished as such!” and the fire was so all-consuming that it could not be put out. The island the palace was built upon was reachable only by three bridges which linked the island to the capital city. That left only three ways the arsonists could have come or gone. But how could they have breached the wall? There was no damage to it, and only one gate which was guarded and watched over by the groundskeepers and servants. Only a single possibility remained... there was a traitor, who let the desert people in. But no one would speak of this, and everyone denied responsibility... for they knew that Gisline would surely have the guilty party put to death for such a deed. She danced around the palace madly, painting her face and body with wavy pink and blue lines, humming “The Dancing Duchess” as she clutched the strange orb in both hands. It glowed with a faint green radiance, the more she held it. She kept crying, sometimes for days on end... and humming like a little girl might. One day, she grew impatient with the search for the arsonists and those who let unto into the gardens to start with... and she began to question the servants herself. Very sweetly, she asked them in a singsong voice: “Wherever are the ones who took my flowers? Where are the ones who burned my trees! Tell me... or I will take what you love the most from you, should I find you to be the one responsible.” But nobody would confess, and so Gisline ordered whole groups of the servants to be rounded up, and several of the guards and groundskeepers with them. All were brought to the auditorium, where Gisline played her song for them upon the kinesetara. When she had finished, she danced again before producing a long spear with an emerald green dagger mounted upon the end of it. She began by running it through the belly of one of the servants, twisting it viciously as she did so. All the while, humming her song. “Show me the one who is guilty. Produce those who burned all my gardens. Or... show me death!” she cried, withdrawing the spear while glaring at still another servant. All of those present were bound hand and foot before her. But they could speak, and still they refused to give up the guilty parties. She slew them horribly, one after another, until only one remained... one of the gate guards on duty the day of the fire. He spat at the Grand Duchess, hissing: “It was I who did the deed... I, who let the desert people in! And I was not acting alone. Many of your servants were with me, for we tire of your childish rule and long for a stronger ruler to take your place. You will never know who is a traitor and who is not. Never, shall you rest peacefully again... never, shall you play your silly, stupid music without wondering if someone in your audience has a blade with your blood intended for it. Kill me, Child Queen of Ra'qia! For child you are in heart and mind, though long past such innocent years are you in body. And now, child... you have killed! For the first time, I would imagine. How does it feel? For your innocence dies with us on this day.” and Gisline wept, held the man tightly, and said to him simply: “I loved you all... why is innocence a crime to you? Why... do you want... violence!” and all the man would do is reply without emotion saying: “We need stronger rule.” And something began to snap in the mind of the Grand Duchess. She screamed, and the orb that was never far from her was blazing with emerald light. This is what she screamed: “If you hate a child so much, fine then! I will BE the kind of ruler you all desire. I will show you... my true strength! What I have kept in check all these many years.” and she pierced the guard's throat with the spear, crying as she did so, tears smearing her makeup and body paint. “I will sing and dance, as I become the ruler this world wishes for! Now, to find people to dance and sing with...” and she stormed out of the auditorium, with a fire in her heart. The golden age that had begun with her rule... was about to come to a catastrophic, and very final end.
It is said that she thereafter killed all of her servants, ordering the remaining guards to execute the lot of them unto the very last one. She then conscripted a whole new order of knights that she thus deemed “The Golden Knights of the Burning Rose”, named in honor of her lost garden and its' flowers. All of them were required to prove their loyalty by undergoing an operation to ensure their sterility. The males also had to consent to be made into eunuchs. In this way... she was sure, she could trust them with her very life. For with fanaticism, she could be certain of loyalty. She had the knights slaughter the guards who has previously executed the servants, and when all of this was done, she declared war upon all the peoples of the desert. In the course of that war, she lost her left arm and had it replaced by a mechanical arm made of golden metal that was actually of a strong steel-like alloy. It was a bloody affair, and it led to a civil war among the people still loyal to the Grand Duchess. Half agreed that the war was just, for the heart of the duchess was inconsolable with grief from the loss of her garden. And half still argued that the war was petty and vengeful and needed to come to an end. But the desert people would never relent in their aggression against the House of Osryl, for their hatred of all who were from off planet originally made them fanatical in their own way. Eventually, the governing body of the civilized worlds of the united galaxy sent an army to bring order to the strife on Ra'qia and the use of atomic weapons was authorized. The planet was bombarded until nothing green remained upon it. The desert people all went into hiding underground, and Gisline retreated to a bunker beneath the palace, and the world that lay above became a desolation. Order had indeed come to the Holy Planet... but at what cost! Years did pass until planetary scientists were sent to do away with the remaining radiation (for their science was advanced enough back then to do this, although the means was lost to antiquity)... and a new Planetary Governor was to be sent to replace Gisline. House Osryl was considered disgraced and stricken from all histories thereafter. The orb Gisline carried, she carried still when her last remaining fanatically loyal servants executed her at her own request. “I want to be with my flowers.” she requested. “I want to see them again!” she demanded. And they sent her to them, with tears in their eyes as well as hers. As the legend goes, in the instant of her death, as her most loyal knight beheaded her... the green orb emitted a bright emerald glow like never before. Once the duchess was dead, the knight cut a scrap of her dress and kept the cloth to remember her by. The cloth was kept by Gisline's descendants, to remember her beauty for all of time (for only a single statue remains of her... and no paintings... and that statue was hidden away on the ancestral home world of House Osryl, from the days before that house moved its' seat of power and authority to New Corinthia. The name of that world was not given, in order so that no one might ever deface the statue carved in the Grand Duchess' likeness. That was how her tale ended.
“So... that is whose dress scrap I have been holding unto since I fled father's palace.” I stated. And Jinmar looked on through the book, studying it intently for hours as I waited for her to complete this study. When it was complete, the courtesan closed the book and looked at me worriedly. “What is it?” I asked her, and she replied, her voice shaking a bit. “It seems that there is a genetic family madness in your ancestral blood... and that the green orb actually brought it out in Duchess Gisline.” I asked Jinmar to be more specific. “What triggers it, does it say?” I inquired. She replied, hesitantly: “The loss of a person's childlike innocence... typically, when something they love above all else is threatened or taken away from them.” I thought about all that I remembered since the antidote had run its' course... of how my father had murdered my mother right before my very eyes, and vowed to disown me due to a thing I could never have hoped to help... I had been born partially female. Externally... I had fully functioning male genitalia... but, I possessed various physical traits of all different sorts that were unique solely to females. His hurtful words to my mother still echoed in my mind, stabbing me through my heart: “I told you only to give me a boy! A male heir to the house of Lan'ka... and what do you give me instead? This child-witted fool who is more woman than man! You are just utterly worthless to me... both of you.”
“You are no son of mine!” he had shouted at me, looking right in my eyes as he strangled my mother to death while the guards held me back from helping her. I got free of their grasp, too late to save her, and my father sprayed me with some sort of chemical from an object he held that I could not see. I had to run, to get away, as the guards chased me. Death or exile would be too much to bear, and so I ran... what happened next was hazy. I found a chamber in the palace containing my mother's belongings. The scrap of my ancestor's dress... my mother's greatest treasure... I had to make sure father would not seek to destroy it. So I took it and ran. And now here I was, in my own self-imposed exile contemplating the prospect of what to do next. I spoke of all this to Jinmar, and she said to me quite honestly: “You need to face your father, Gislu, and put a stop to him... he keeps oppressing the people and robbing us of our very history. He is a bigot, a racist, and a monster. And... if this continues... we will ALL of us lose the things we love the most.” We spent a few days planning things after that, and through her networks of contacts Jinmar found a powerful, honorable patron for our insurrection. This was actually how I first came to meet Baroness Cyndijaz Megg of House Hara'kaon. She was a native of our world, Gehenna Primus, and a longtime rival of my family, House Lan'ka. Never quite an enemy though, just a bit on the competitive side. However, the Baroness made no secret of her disgust of and hatred for my father himself. She had, on numerous occasions, stated that I would have turned out better had I been brought up in House Hara'kaon... and my heart was now drawn to that very notion more and more. “The house of Lan'ka falls this month!” I vowed to Jinmar, thinking it would take that long to bring this to fruition. Of course, I still had to meet with the Baroness. Once I did so, that would come to change everything.
The room was jet black, with red and gold trim, and shaven-headed servants brought forth golden platters piled high with food. Fruits, vegetables, and sweet delicacies. These were presented to both I and Jinmar with something of a flourish as we sat at the dining table before us. At its' head was a very imposing woman with hair as red as an apple, held up in a magnificent coiffure by ornate golden cones. She wore a transparent black and red gown that did little to hide her large form, under which she wore a rather loose-fitting red and gold top paired with voluminous pantaloons of a precisely matching color scheme. Both were embroidered with flame-like designs all across the fabric. She wore gilded bracelets and a magnificent ruby necklace with a bright gold chain. Her earrings... naturally... were ruby as well. Various rings adorned her fingers, one of which was her house's signet ring. She was a very big woman in every sense of the word... and her generosity and ambition were widely renowned. People looked to her as a bit of a savior in recent years... at least in the political sense. I wondered if the woman herself matched this view, or if her ostentation was closer to the truth of her nature. She spoke in a cultured, well-mannered voice a bit on the deep side for a woman: “Count Gislu Ra'vann... of House Lan'ka.... at least until today. I never thought that I would be having you of all people over for supper! Welcome. As I understand it, they say you are somewhat childlike in certain ways. And a hermaphrodite as well? It is alright, you can admit to these things in my presence. Unlike your father... I will never judge you for it! Instead, I would be totally willing to adopt you into our house once your father is dead. Yes... dead. We must see to that, naturally! And, you would mean as much to me I suspect as my younger sister Caleo. Although you are, I must admit, a great deal older than she is indeed. Even so! I will act in deference to your mental state, which I again assure you I will never judge you for. One cannot help having certain... disorders, sometimes. Yours, at least, I can only assume you were born with. Mine... was inflicted upon me. But we are not here to talk about me! Let us discuss the future of our world and how to fix things.”
She was sickly and hiding it quite well... and as we talked further I sensed she knew that I understood such pain. At one point, as we plotted and planned what was to come... she stood up, walked on over to me with the aid of a gilded cane, and put her other hand on my shoulder comfortingly. Just as a mother.
It began with a fire at my father's refineries and factories. He never saw it coming, and by the time he scrambled enough people to respond to it... Cyndijaz Megg had ordered massive airships of her house to move in and firebomb the sites until they were burning slabs of twisted and charred metal. The smell of burning chemicals filled the night air, and massive green noxious clouds were incinerated during the course of the inferno that followed. Soon, an overwhelming number of ground troops were deployed... and all my father's forces were hopelessly outnumbered. Cyndijaz Megg had been mobilizing an army in countless numbers while my father became increasingly complacent and secure in his power all these decades long. It was about to cost him everything! Whole sections of the city caught fire and burned... and ever after that fateful night, the House Hara'kaon became known as the House of Fire. My father's large stable of slaves were all set free at once by Megg's forces, and the former servants rebelled against him with newfound zeal when they saw that I was with them... and not with him. I was on the frontlines of this battle, while Jinmar stayed behind with Megg in her floating command fortress high above the city skyline, from which she could observe all that transpired below. It was the end for House Lan'ka. People had called it a “house of demons” and now there was one demon working for the cause of true righteousness. That demon was I, as I fell upon my father's forces without mercy, slaughtering them in great numbers with a red-bladed shock-sword given to me by the Baroness I now served. I stormed into the vaults of my father's palace, a hundred fighting men and women behind me, along with freed slaves in numbers far greater still. There was something I needed to fetch from my mother's chambers before facing my father... and so I ran up the winding metal stairs to the tower that had been her home for so long ere that evil man took her away from me. Everything had been left exactly as it had been when she was alive, nothing removed or changed in any way whatsoever! I found her jewelry box, about the size of a footlocker, and in it I found the green sphere that had belonged once to the Grand Duchess Gisline in another age out of old legends. My namesake, for Gislu was the gender neutral variant of Gisline! I clutched the orb in my left hand, holding my sword in my right... but first, I put the blade down and cupped it in both hands, willing with all my mental strength for the artifact to accept me. It glowed with a green light, and I knew that it did. I picked up my weapon again and stormed out like an angry beast.
The palace gardens were burning... I did not blame the righteous mob that set them ablaze. They only wanted their freedom, having been oppressed for far, far too long! I blamed the evil man who oppressed them, who so poisoned them and kept them from their very pasts. The man who had sought to erase the very existence of my noblest ancestor Gisline. I would see to it at long last, that she was remembered... and never forgotten again, for all of time! I was skipping through the halls of the palace, humming for all to hear the melodic tune of “The Dancing Duchess”... as I cut men down with a bloody fury the likes of which they had never seen in me before. I gave myself wholly over to Gisline's memory, to her very legend, and I felt her spirit within me. I was her. I felt all the pain, all the anguish, she had known in her tragic life. Never again! Never again would they forget me. Were they my words? Hers? I knew not, but I knew only that I wanted this war to end, and at the end of it... a brighter future for Gehenna Primus.
The orb was blazing with emerald light when the throne room's doors were thrown open after being battered nearly to breaking by the siege devices Megg's forces employed. I was first to rush into the vast chamber beyond, with its' dull green and gold walls emblazoned as they were with images of hideous creatures and beasts from long-lost lore. My father had no guards left... he had ordered them all out to defend his palace, and they were all dead in bloody heaps all throughout. The cowardly man stood like a fool behind his throne, clutching it as if it would save his pathetic life. “No son... no son of mine!” he shouted at me. I smiled cruelly, stating in response: “No son at all! I am Gisline of House Osryl... and this is MY hour of revenge! Prepare to join the flowers of the gardens, that burn now because of you.”
I threw Gisline's dagger at him, producing it from a hidden sheathe in one of my boots. As I hoped, he panicked and broke out of cover from behind the throne. He was totally unarmed... just as my mother had been when he strangled the life out of her, and took one of the things I loved the most from me in all the universe. His death would be just payment for such a deed! The orb was by now in a pouch at my belt. I picked up the dagger from the floor where it had tumbled and I rammed it into my father's stomach. Not enough to kill him... not yet. And I even told him this! “Not yet! You will not die yet... not until you know the terror my mother felt at your hands.” He was bleeding, doubling over winded. Not even word came from his mouth. “Nothing to say, old man? Fine with me!” and I set my sword aside, taking the man's neck into my hands. “Mad... you're a madman!” he gurgled at me. “Ah, but do you not remember, 'father'? I am not a man at all! I was always more woman than man, you said. I am no longer simply your child. I was NEVER your child! Only my mother's. I am the Grand Duchess Gisline Osryl! And you tried to erase me from existence. But I was always right here, the whole time! Right under tour nose. I kicked the man over unto the floor and took out the glowing green orb. It was actually hot to the touch. “I thought... that was destroyed... long ago.” he spat, holding his throat and rubbing it. “You cannot destroy me! But I... I can destroy you.” I said to him, my voice no longer my own but that of the long-dead duchess Gisline. My eyes were glowing green from holding the orb, and I could see things in other planes, on other realities. I was losing myself more and more in this moment. A timeless moment! I kicked the dagger deeper into my father's belly. He shrieked like a stuck pig. It was a fitting moment for such a pig of a man. “Let me send you to meet my beloved flowers... in Hell!” I shouted to him, picking up my sword and striking it so deeply into him via his left shoulder that he was nearly bisected from the blow. “Not yet!” I said again, choking the man with all the rage I had held back for all the years he had tormented me. “Not yet! Not yet!” I screamed, again and again. He was very dead by this point, his eyes bulging and bloody from me strangling him and beating him about the face over and over again, his tongue sticking out from between his teeth, which had nearly bitten it off from the force of my blows. Suddenly... a little girl was standing behind me... one of the freed slaves. “Please stop! Don't get lost in your rage.” she said. I let my father's corpse tumble to the ground and I dropped the green orb to the floor next to it. My sword was permanently embedded in the man's body. The emerald light was gone, the orb gone dark. I was myself again... Gisline was gone. “It is over.” I said, and I held the little girl in my arms and began to sob. There was blood all over my hands, all over me, and I got some on the child's white garments. “I am sorry.” I said to her about that. I was crying for my mother, who was at last now able to rest in peace. Crying, holding that child... and trying to forget.
Cyndijaz Megg became the absolute ruler of the entire planet of Gehenna Primus, after that. She had won the hearts and minds of the people during the fall of House Lan'ka, and I was adopted into her own house as promised. Jinmar became my royal consort, but I was still not allowed to marry her due to her not being of noble birth. I was instead betrothed to the little girl who had snapped me back to my senses in my father's throne room on that fateful night. For, despite her having been kept a slave in my father's house, the child was in fact of noble birth... the long-lost princess of the House of Aeros, whose parents were a great king and queen on the Imperial home world of New Corinthia. It was they who insisted on the marriage... for they felt indebted to me for the girl's rescue from servitude. The little girl's name was Sciopia Ximmsia, but I gave her the nickname of “Sapphira” due to her sparkling blue eyes. Now that she was no longer a slave, she was allowed to grow out her hair... and I found it to be a most beautiful shade of golden blonde. I gave her the old green orb of Gisline as a present, but I cautioned her to keep it always in a glass case and never to hold it in both hands, only ever in just one, and to never, ever turn her will upon it. Within the case, the ancient scrap of Gisline's dress lay beneath the orb... and, in this way, my ancient ancestor would rest in peace, assured of being remembered. A new age... had begun!
Published 6th Apr 2022
Author's Note
Based upon some of my more ancient past-life memories.
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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