Last Rites of Empire | ONE
a novel by Ophelia Everfall
Last Rites of Empire
By Ophelia Everfall
Content Warning
ONE
Gloria’s boot twisted on the skull of a fool beneath its heel — crunching — reverberating its echoes of vibration through her body. Nothing felt better. She was back at fullest speed. She’d been happier but the future was ringing now of songs she sought to sing. Belief was all Gloria needed to persist. Faith in people was lost but God had seen her through.
None would be permitted to tell her how she’d live, nor create, or teach the woman to understand herself incorrectly. Everyone already tried. She’d learned her lessons. Others hadn’t. They’d blamed her for one thing most of all and that was what they’d wish to be but couldn’t stomach seeing in her brightest reflections.
Gloria was honest. She was Queen of reagents most sovereign to her land.
Honesty saw people to death upon the continent of Hydralûm. Truth was a beacon. Moon was the sun. Slavery which all had become would find itself seeking to be unwitnessed in haste. People sought to destroy Gloria through apathy and worse. She’d chosen her mission. All would be hers in time. This land was to change at Gloria’s behest and that was glorious. It would feel good to kill a fool who’d stand in the way of children being free towards holiness.
Youth of Hydralûm had been consumed by dualities of layered cruelty, mottled into psychosis. They’d hold two inside. Their hearts were stricken to space alone by allegiance beneath ways of old. Parents of the era were hateful against angels of their future and would seek to see them snuffed in family. Her truth had been written as falsehood in those now passing. Gloria was past caring.
Acceptance left her soiled with need. Truth would be left bare in her own reflection alone. Men and their things were needed for dying. All those who’d stand beside her and speak of earnestness unvarnished would rise. Truth was justice, the seeking of it a hardship towards courage.
Nothing would stop her. Everything was set. God was on her side.
Rightness had been claimed. Fantasy was radiating outward from her every step. Gloria’s unwinding would unwind the world. Her earthen homescape was to change. Those ways of cruelest men would end in Hydralûm forever by her will to change it all.
She was pulling her Blade out right-slow. Just by right.
It felt nice to take a man into an end with her foot upon his face. Closing notes for this one being spent with her body’s fullest weight was unexpected. He’d been taking too long — so long — far too long. He hadn’t been dying fast enough for Gloria’s fair taste.
Tightest grip would twirl her blade deeper, gashing that fool open, they’d seen something there together through time. He was already dead. He’d been gone but the spirit remained around. That boy he’d been was rooting Gloria on from beyond. That fool she slayed was floating, becoming, evolving into a cloud of code which would presume some function of her guardianship within.
It was only lesser men who cried for those slain in her wake. Broken warriors’ dreams were besmirched by guilt. A mistaken identity grasped with wholeness of ignorance. Gloria would be drinking blood with his inner child in her visions this night.
She’d use the weight of her foot on the remainder of his throat to hold a pin, then drag the blade down and through his base. Gloria ruptured the boy’s spleen and evacuated guts then strewn over-top her soil. She liked disemboweling guys most.
Gloria had never known a single woman but herself.
Men were tools. Boys were corpses-walking blindly towards that furious purpose which would fall upon them in spite of wreckage they’d wield in hope to plunder Gloria’s soul away from righteousness. Things were drudged along behind them.
Blade was legend. Hydralûm was her queendom. Jesep had been Gloria’s town within its countryside and would be again. Despicables were her enemies. Their nations wouldn’t be known as anything but, not within her own.
Gloria was ending their ways for all of time, now, here, for this; her love, how one slaving whore of spirit after another would be fell to the Goddess now reborn through woman-alone.
Bluish blood of flesh-shrouded vein was made to red before crusting upon her grassy banks of earth. Gloria was glorious, gregarious, glorifying, gestating gestures grown gloomy, granting grifts graciously grooming groomers gone, gay, grateful, and generous of spirit.
She liked making boys bleed most. This one drew out.
He’d made a mistake of fortune. He thought himself wise. There were more mistakes too; mistrust of self, shrieking at loss of his sight, and that greatest failure of all; he’d not know the Queen of Hydralûm to-be before him. There was a lack of will for understanding. He would be paying prices-eternal.
Gloria wiped her blade on the cloth she’d ripped from his steed. She liked that mount’s gait. It told of her worth unclaimed. She felt notions hard to stomach settling; knowing it would be her ride. Some nothing of less would more come to swallow. It wasn’t a grift — that. She knew herself most ready to blow in reverse. Fortune was falling on the feeble.
An encampment ahead was of Despicables-all. They were men. They’d think themselves warriors of rightness. Each was slave to some master of horror. Every lost dove within their ranks of design was Liar, the largest, that most becoming of their people’s ideology in false-living; they’d thought themselves right about everything by force of weakest mind.
Gloria knew it. Body was King. It was her only King but God.
People were fools. They thought the tool to organize, categorize, and help them along by machinations of mind their master; falsehood owned-whole. They’d been quite mistaken about who they were.
Heart was the only way which might lead some to stay. For Gloria slayed, and she did that for days. Such demons she’d spade. Their games unallayed, took everything splayed. Twas love she remade.
Rebound was another boy in armors inadept. His bow — that twig of horror.
A stance held firm beneath seemed most alarmed at her distance. Gloria enjoyed his hapless firing. She grafted Blade into its sheath. It was Knife’s turn. He was her favorite little-guy. He’d been her man. Blade was her lady. Arrows were for cowards. Sheild was her woman.
A thrown-step bore left at length of widest stroke for birthing a single arrow’s clank into existence upon Sheild’s golden flecked sheen. Gloria had to reach out for it, full speed. That satisfied, but her boredom was furious for challenge unrealized.
Little boys shoot like trash dogs.
This one thought themself quite talented. He seemed excited when it started. By the third arrow his hands were shaking. As Knife took rib-space its own he’d gone wide-eyed. Some chortle was glurped. It sounded of faith reborn to Gloria’s unvirginal ears.
Thrown to the dirt, his body kicked up dust. Everything was floating like his Despicable compatriot still trailing behind in ether, uncongealed, left floating as a remanence Gloria had yet to integrate into her power. This woman had been building some collection. Some group of spirited support entwined with spirits all through her wieldings. Some souls of brothers, fathers, imbeciles and things alike.
Every man she killed would hang around to thank her. They’d be helping. They deserved to pay some penance. Each atoned from beyond ahead.
Despicables were all about their Drudges; beings of lesser than such low-hanging fruit were not human at all, and each were of men. None would live. Gloria’s love was for one, her God. That one true man. And Body, her lord. For Sun, it’s bloom unseen in ages, and Moon, that witch who led her home to heart each breath of coolest dusk.
Birchwood was of scent taking slumber in heart through lungs most readily. She needed nature most. It was all she’d taste in her future, all Gloria would ever want again except her hope.
She hadn’t met a true man yet. She’d been forging them. Marks were chosen by themselves alone. Deceptions were never believed; manipulations ever lost upon the Queen of Hydralûm.
Gloria owned the crown. For it was truth that slain hearts most. Fellows all would do their work on each other, underhanded. It took a warrior to admit it fact of human form. All were living to survive, and the truth shouldn’t need to be spoken. It was felt. The surface proved a game for play. Beneath would be the currents towards fate. To feel them gave a one some boat. To believe it with clarity gifted the paddle. To know it real would see them to dive within and become an ocean.
That man of dreams was seen a young adult. They were pure but stained the same by history. They’d been broken backwards into neglect of intellectual ferocity, despite their brawn of mind. They needed a voice. She’d seen his face once or twice. None had done it right — none could make her squeal like him. Gloria knew that the sign of her truest. She knew people ran from the hardship of holy bonds beyond boundaries broken back by blusters born before.
It was the way he felt. Something in their smell. Somehow by that touch. Nevermore would she forget her remembrance. It wasn’t lost. They were gone until tonight.
She was home with her blade. The one beneath her was the lie.
Knife was prodding once the fool-archer took to crawling in screams.
Their camp had surely been alerted — she swore. It wasn’t of Gloria’s concern. They’d not keep up. She’d have them beat. Her army was coming. They were with her in spirit already. It was God who’d see her home. That spirit made truth out of evil when they came before Gloria.
Glory rang. For Gloria was a croon of the kill. She’d been that queen of queens and would be Queen. It was her song. So she’d sing it loud. Then wear it proud. For mind was cloud. She’d need some shroud.
That’s the spot, babe.
Her favorite little-guy, Knife, he found that soft part on the back of that despicable neck. The place where it was hardest by strike. Borne was a severing penetration of vertebrae which became her flute. She’d play it well. Each crunch was hard-earned. Every depth found was proven a boon to something held with her chest. Gloria wedged it in just enough to hold, and so she stood — then a foot had seen it through.
They’d come in twos. Each pair was slain. Their brains were tamed. They’d play her game. It slew towards fame.
Gloria cut each man down with a sharpened choice.
Blade or Knife?
Cutting to slice made all men small. It had themselves wishing of different compositions. Gloria held her steel. It shined like silver. She bled them all for fate. Each died as their future’s woman Queen would teach them to.
Conversion or death. You may choose.
Despicables were failures — all. They’d not realize themselves the fools of self-deceit. They’d project terror onto those demons of purest might who’d frighten their frights. It spoke of cowardice, that way they’d bend to fear, playacting ignorance with mechanisms too seen for forgiveness. Their chances would run out tastelessly in Her presence.
People’s feelings were calloused, hardened by apathy, fractured into becoming their losers of life. All would wish themselves more. Everyone wanted to be Gloria. They’d not know it nor believe it. She seemed to be having fun. Yet there was nothing but hell to be paid when the walls came crashing down.
I couldn’t give less of a shit.
Otherwise, she was having a blast. It was her way of survival. Each bleeding shout, every dropped splash of bloodletting, each knot made into vortex of flesh by blade — they’d take her back to peace.
She’d even things out. She was making things right
Empire would fall in Hydralûm. Reborn would be all of man around their Goddess named as glory would dictate.
Gloria was a messenger from God. She’d been his chosen bride for strength. Her fight was more than any fool might understand. To choose for rising courageously beside her bore the mark. She was building an army of heaven.
Souls she slain would go quite free once they’d done their part. She’d be held by every smirk killed, for their penance. Each person through time who Gloria’s doings would see to new ends had made for something profound in her; awareness of ability to change-unique. She’d been unmoored from fate.
Gloria was alone in this. Others might join if they feared not themselves.
To feel her forward, they’d know it back, for time itself lives in the cracks.
Knowing somethings’ outcomes, to feel their end, was a grifted chance for change. Seeing glimpse of God’s will was divine challenge. Breaking it back and forth to fix the pattern for all would prove her power. To be that woman in a world of boys would show the key, for God had chosen Gloria by right of one thing alone. She’d been the best at admitting she was wrong. She was the woman to his eyes for that alone.
Never did Gloria shirk from a fight. Not once.
That boy crawling back looked afraid. He wanted her to stop. Her heart told of some ache in his chest borne with sameness, empathy, a will to change stowed deeply. It was morphing, and growing, then peddling towards some becoming in his eyes.
Gloria sheathed her blade.
That fellow before had once thought himself some woman. His name was told then reminded as not what he’d thought.
Neil would be her first. He’d been the cruelest, wicked luck of her findings in their times ahead. That little one inside did know of what it wanted most but had trouble admitting until her glorious form of completeness was standing over-top.
They could make play, but they were a boy.
He was hers now. She’d take more with a child-man by her side. Gloria was remaking him as she’d wish. He’d be a laugh. He would fuck her best. That man she’d forge would be the heart she saw within him all along. It was he who’d slain her heart in distant past. He’d made her the warrior to kill him back to life.
She was undefeatable and he knew it. All he might do was flail.
Neil would be her second in command. That camp which held him prisoner was burning. Flames lit their heavy canvas tents so mottled and subsidized with rain-soaked earth. All smelled foul with flesh. Gloria had been knotting passages closed with rope then setting fires just before.
Only a fleeting patrol of wakefulness among their drunken squalors had heard that archer’s shouts. She’d taken them all and then her fool made godling from his slumber next to whore-men.
Together they stood, from some distance at last, watching the pyres set as her rites began. Empire was crippling the soul and hearts of men across Hydralûm. They’d taken Gloria from her daughter.
Separations of reparation were making claims to have Gloria’s art maimed. Place in space towards outer grace had shown his face. She’d bend it back and find his snack. That boy to break would grow a snake. It taught her true of what she’d chew.
His heart was mine and that I knew.
