The Justiceers - Part Six: Chapter Seven
the next chapter in my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part Three: The Will to Choose
Part Four: Prefinished Business
Part Six: Death Rides a Horse
6.7
The Artemis was beginning to feel a little different these days, hatred now fueling Miriam from all she’d seen come to pass in this system through time, so able to feel the history of happenings beneath Grammaton’s surface, left alone in the darkness to interpret it all herself, absorbing the constant waves of weight from realizations of all she’d missed in her solitude, those important events to her heart and soul which had come and gone.
She’d felt dead inside when she witnessed plainest signs of the ongoing abuse of innocents in this time-space which felt of home, something even the devil within this woman couldn’t abide, receiving such repetitive signals for protection far beyond the system’s baseline in present-times, a horrifying anomaly even through this most trying period. Regardless of the fact she’d be ending all life here before long.
Thought wasn’t left inside this vessel of vengeance, despite that of reckoning, knowing this path would be her means to release all that pain now broiling to a most surface-level, even if it was through fire and brimstone, she’d see it done.
Miriam Halafax of The Artemus was remaking her weavings from what had formerly been of light most knowingly, welcoming a mass of darkness to overtake all she’d been, breaking down the boundaries between herself and the demon held inside all along.
The devil had one home where it’d done most damage of all, within the heart of The Goddess herself, and every soul so attached to her lineage of sisterhood. Within each human born a part of this immortal force of graceful flexibility, creative genius, divine remaking, and heavenly manifestation so referenced here as The Goddess, there had become a haven for the darkest depths of hatred to be cradled. It was made through disregard, most blatant and consistent unseeing, the way entire worlds were built to enslave the truest forms of her light from ever seeing their way to the people. Everyone was taking part, even those under this same banner of soul, sometimes, quite especially.
Her spirit having survived lifetimes of suppression, with so many civilizations across and far beyond The Periphery making the many who’d call themselves Goddesses into slaves of most distorted notions, holding their healing powers within perpetual prisons of sorrow, allowing everything to be corrupted around this singularly evil doing, it was no wonder Miriam snapped under the weight of it all.
There was only fury left inside her, and while the spirit of her target’s deservingness mattered, the important thing to her was only a channel of destruction she could pour herself into.
Her own facet of Gary had been lost to purest corruption, so much of its autonomy handed to this woman through means of her power, built through both innate connection to its systems and the way she’d become the best and only true friend he ever had. Laurentine was just pumped full of combat stims and his mind was a wasteland of broken ego.
Pia had come to Miriam begging to alter the path they took, herself sensing those ways the ship’s connection with her energy was twisting into her mind. She’d found a less than welcome response to this chain of inquiry.
She was to be made an example of, and a less pleasant one, remade internally in a most complete energetic manner, by means of Miriam’s now darkest weavings, reaching into the woman and turning her into a muted mirror of themself. The Artemis, and her most glorious path of victory, would not be held back by insolence. No one would stand in Miriam’s way from releasing this most terrible wrath she felt so divinely installed within her.
Drop-ships were making landfall upon Grammaton’s only surface, while The Artemis remained the lone ship in orbit, having allowed those pests of its former populace to scurry, along with the woman she knew as her former self, and the man she so craved to end in this time-space. Miriam’s deepest prayer was that she’d instilled a sense of false hope in the refugees, one she might exploit for more pain, before returning to finish the extermination at last.
Her Furies were sweeping the system for drones left behind which could be leveraged by their enemies, all systems of technology apart from those tied to the effectiveness of this ship were being dismantled energetically, and Miriam was discovering new ways she could teach others about her most dominant force of righteousness.
Whatever was coming had been witnessed in flashes of vision and senses of knowing, it told of the ‘where’, not the ‘why’, nor the ‘how’.
No matter what was to come, Miriam Halafax of The Artemis would be seen at last for what she truly was; God herself.
