It was just before dawn when Rhela halted her bike just past the gates of Camp Bluefog. She sighed and shut the engine off, sitting back in the saddle slightly as she pulled out her tobacco pouch and used the tank in front of her as a table to roll a cigarette. The sun would take hours to break through the ambient fog, if it did at all. One foot balanced on the ground, holding up the weight of the massive motorcycle, and the other rested on the opposite foot peg. She sparked her lighter and cupped a wrapped hand around the flame as she brought it up to the roll between her lips.Â
Peistes and who knew what all else moved in the darkness beyond the gate lamps as she stared down the road at the faint glow of the ceruleum plant. Not for the first time, she considered turning back and going up to Mor Dhona first. Picking up a drink for herself, maybe spending the night there before making another attempt at the Castrum tomorrow.
Rhela took a slow drag, squinting through the scrim of smoke as she exhaled. It was a bad time to be doing this trip at all, with her mental state being what it was. But she’d planned it before everything had gone to shit. She pulled her tomestone out and clicked the screen on, not surprised to see no new messages. Anyone who might reach out was either drunk or had already gone to sleep. Delaying another day to spend the night in Mor Dhona wouldn’t make things any better. She pocketed the device again and kept staring into the murky darkness as she smoked.
Behind her, bells sounded the guard change. Once upon a time, this had been a strategically significant post. Now, it was just a sleepy little camp on the way to somewhere else.
“That time again?,” a familiar voice called out from the top of the wall.
“Aye,” Rhela called back, exhaling smoke into the fog.
“New bike?”
“Starlight gift.”
The guard whose name she had never bothered to learn whistled. “Must be someone special.” Rhela chuckled and shook her head. “We’ve been getting more reports of Ahriman. Watch yourself out there.”
She flicked her cigarette away. “Always do.” She hopped up to kick the engine over, and everything else was lost under the roar as she sped off once again.
—
Castrum Meridianum loomed large overhead as Rhela pushed her bike behind a long-abandoned barricade and threw the cover over it. The outer walls looked as sturdy as ever — a bastion of the Empire, of the XIVth Legion. Both long dead. She made her slow way up the last part of the hill to the remains of the cairn she’d built the last time. Someone had knocked it down again. Every time. For all she knew, it was the guard at Bluefog.
Seventy nine stones.
It took Rhela most of the morning to collect them again, and stack them back into the rough pyramid she’d fashioned the first year.Â
Seventy nine names.
She remembered them all. Garleans and Ala Mhigans, mostly. A few from the far flung provinces of the Empire. Sons and daughters and orphans. Fathers. Friends. Lovers. Brothers, to each other.
Seventy nine lives.
Titus’s men. And then her men, however briefly. So many lives were lost that day, but these. These were hers. And she had failed them all. Rhela knelt before the insufficient memorial in silence.
Eventually, she pulled her flask from her hip and uncapped it, dumping a bit over the stones. Tapped the container on the ground before taking a drink.
“Just one, this time.” She smiled and screwed the top shut before tucking the flask away again. “Sure isn’t the future we imagined, is it? But… I’m still here. World’s changing so fast, people are moving on. Heard the other day that what’s left of the senate made a trade agreement with Radz-at-Han. Guess the world almost ending puts things in perspective.”
Rhela sat back and rolled another cigarette, lighting it and smoking in silence after. More words would come eventually. Or they wouldn’t. She doubted the dead minded much, either way.
"Correct me if I am wrong…" The second hum came out deeper than the last with a darker, more taunting undertone to it. "But your kind also have mating cycles?" Emet-Selch's smile grew until a sliver of teeth were exposed.
"No use playing dumb," Alma growled before biting the inside of her cheek, "Yes. Au Ra do that-"
"They call it heat, yes?"
Whatever redness she thought she'd settled flushed right back to full intensity. "Yes! It's heat and I'm trying to deal with it, and I really, really, really don't need the bloody ascian pointing it out to me."
Alma stood upright, placing her right hand on her upper left biceps to scratch and squeezed at her arm scales nervously.
Fuck. Just say it.
"Okay. Then would you be my mate?"
Elidibus provides Ilberd weaponry which he'd use towards the freedom of Ala Mhigo. He does so not out of belief in the movement, but because it will sow chaos to which he and the Ascians can abuse for the rejoining.
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