Last Rites of Empire | THREE
a novel by Ophelia Everfall
Last Rites of Empire
By Ophelia Everfall
Content Warning
THREE
Christ felt warmest in the chest of Gloria. She’d been the one. Her heart was the hub of all. She needed to become herself. Every kill — the Liars fell, each Drudge shown out — she’d feel it as some call to shout. Her blood-cry was a legend to-be.
Things were everywhere. Whatever creation of gross malfeasance had spawned the monsters was inside. Lesser beings of squalor would be seen to with a smile.
Gloria had been killing.
Blade was hungry. Knife — only more excited by the moment.
Slipping and sliding, ripping and riding, gross and inviting, Gloria rode lightning. Fury bled men. It showed them to end. She’d bleed them anew. A world reborn true.
I’m going to fucking kill this place.
A boy’s abdomen was being seen to. It already had in many ways. Gloria was pulling out Blade rightly, slowest, made with patience, gripped from slumber, known her right to hold and own by choice. Blood dripped from its pocked sheen. Each breath of Knife was smooth and not. Chevrons embossed to steel would roughen the passage of its removal.
Every entry, each incision, lasting effects, that twist below her leveraged bootstep; it was a faithful fall towards truth.
“Neil!” Gloria called her man’s attention. He’d spun around from the battle ahead of him. War was set off inside Hellspawn Keep, that Despicables’ lair now fighting against itself.
Elecánt was the goal. Some honored princess-man. Spoiled and rotten. Awkward and cloying. A lie. A boy. The coward.
There would be some stop along the way.
Jeb was a man. He’d always been a girly one. There was no hope but to touch little boys. He told it the same when questioned by his King.
“It just seemed cute.”
Gloria was taking her time with Jeb. She’d isolated Beladré, Jeb’s slave-boy-man-child, while setting him free, teaching of Jeb’s whorish ways, riddling his mind of hardest truths nigh unclaimable for that foolish-hearted gooch-clown.
Holding grandpa Jeb down by force, that other man watching from his wall-pegs — Gloria was happy. She had no regrets. Never would she hold the lie of regret again, for any, nor herself. Never again.
She only felt sorry for her feelings as they went. Afterwards she realized the gift of her heart. It was such a gift. Gloria forgave everyone. Hydralûm hadn’t wanted to understand. She was making it by force of spite. For she would be forgiving herself immediately as she raped Jeb to death.
She’d broken a bedpost properly off-in-two.
Sharpest ends were weakest things, the shadow bore to freedom bring, some newest hope would be her need, that baby-child would prove her steed. Neil was just lame. He’d been of such pain. That way he had took. His magick was cooked. It made the man to lose again. He was a girl. But not — unfurled.
Shattered chunks of wooden viscera were erupting on each pull-back.
Nothing had ever felt more correct to Gloria’s body. Her mind was suffering. That heart it held most too. But it was glee, for she’d be free, each stab and lance, it stole their glance, a latent thing, some spacious being, they’d break right free.
Now come to me.
Shouts were shot into wall-echoed, space-muted, thought-soaked realizations. This King and Queen were a pair of idiots. They were whores. They’d been slugs to their coin. Gloria wasn’t sad for them at all. Only the part of herself which died along with them.
Beladré would hang there for a while first.
Elecánt was with some pretty slut who wanted to lock them down from being a wretched whore. He just wanted his pussy.
Judgements borne had been undone. That boy had seemed to see her fun. His little wrath would be most blue.
For he loved me, never you.
Gloria drove him to the stake of Lady Blade. He didn’t like it at first, but something in his eyes changed as she’d driven him back into the wooden paneled chamber-wall. That boy to be ruined into a corpse was screaming like a lady-dwarf-oracle. Gloria felt, in that moment, as if she might know one of those in the future.
“Petty child.” Gloria’s mouth whispered into his ear space.
Knife split his throat at surface. It was her knack of the gash which saw Gloria through. He wasn’t even bleeding really. It was just a little crispy on the edges. Gloria didn’t like it. She saw the wound there — knowing what it meant to her.
Knife went straight in, back, finding a way to stick itself into somewhere special, and Gloria ripped Blade free from his chest, turning again, facing her Elecánt.
He was stunned, silent, mesmerized by the forming of Gloria’s body. Paralyzed he’d be, in shortest order, when of witness for all to come.
Neil entered hastily with breath too short. He’d been fighting needlessly in the battles set-off amongst petty men, showing it far too much in his stature. He wasn’t the make of Elecánt; a princess proving some woman to Gloria. Elecánt’s art of heartful beaconing was so welcoming, most pleased by her own advances, in reversals of mind-truth blared by his sunken heart.
Elecánt was ready for the show Gloria had in store.
Neil was to die for love before her.
Gloria charged him with fury. She’d thrown Blade wide and kicked into his abdomen. The boy hadn’t seen it coming. He was a fighter though and took her low. Neil drove Gloria backwards. He’d taken her off kilter, and sideways, down to the floor.
She’d drug the boy with her, biting his face-skin at the temple, through his rigid hairline, tearing a great swath free for the spitting.
She shouted it then.
“I fucking love you!”
Blade was down. Elecánt was of some wretched wetness. Everything had been right at last. Gloria knew it time.
She will be mine.
Neil was digging into his hanging sheath for the removal of his own, weakest, knife. Gloria was stronger than Neil, through she’d been injured by his magic. She’d wanted so for him to know it in the Fall. Yet there would seem no chance for love at sight of Elecánt. She was too gorgeous, and the only woman to Gloria’s eyes.
Never, never, never more her heart would be shed to the floor. Anger found had been let out, despot men were bearing gout. Curses all, every one. Their guts would hit the floor to run.
Gloria used her thighs to wrestle Neil prone, onto his back. The boy was crying. He’d not believed what was happening. There was a loss to the girl he once saw. She’d never been this woman before. He couldn’t say a word.
Headbutts were Gloria’s home. She had a hardest skull.
Once up she’d stomped his body where unguarded, until a shot for the heel of her boot to his face was lined up. Gloria glanced back to Elecánt once more — checking her restraints — knowing it divinity seen in their eyes. Glory was for women like the two of them alone. Excellence had been Gloria’s to own in her sight.
Elecánt wasn’t going anywhere. Neil, however, she’d been thinking on.
I’m going to fucking kill this little bitch.
Bled from the nose, tears stifled by pain, Gloria lifted Blade.
Elecánt called out, “Do it!”
Gloria froze finally and thought it through to her bones. She was seeing it then, how things might go. An army was needed. Neal could be her dog.
