The Empress's Passage

     I took off running at the sound of the screams. I knew it was a small child just by the pitch of it. It came from a fallen building. The scream echoed out of a horizontal window with an edge of broken glass that was dark as night. A gateway to hell beckoning me forward, the screams of the damned within.

      A royal must know the pain of the loyal, lest they forget what service costs.

      I kicked the edge of the window and squeezed through, another scream of suffering and fear bellowed over me like a cold wind traveling down a tunnel. I crawled through the twisted heap of the old world. Long hallways stretched upward at the angle of a ramp to the pinpoint of a far-off window. My rifle’s light leading my charge. I stopped at a T, listening for the cry in the maze of a collapsed society. My heart thumped in my chest as I looked up and left to right. A demon could come crawling from any one of these openings, I thought. I’d never get my barrel in its direction before the teeth sank in. The fear consumed the reason I’d come here. My skin began to crawl my breaths louder and heavier, and my sweaty brow glimmered in what little light I had. My hands trembled.

      Fear is not a weakness, fear is not a distraction, fear is a fuel. Like anger, and hate it can be used to push one’s body to limits beyond the known. It is important to know this as if one understands fear, one knows how to use it.

      I lifted my weapon and crawled further into the fallen structure bringing my gun around corners tight to my body. I heard the call echo and I stopped. Without being sure, I could find myself slinking around this labyrinth for hours, or get lost myself. So I waited…and another scream came and I maneuvered my gun down a tunnel to my left. It opened up thankfully tall enough to stand, but it was dark as night; open doors ran down it on both left and right. But it’d come down from that way, I was sure of it. My light washed over the hallway as I peeked into room after room. The sheer number of angles and hiding spots I was surprised with around every corner was impossible to cover all by yourself. Not to mention thinking about what was behind me was enough to send a consistent cold wash up my back.

      When I reached the end of the passage my light shined back at me in a reflection of thick blood that streamed from my right. I swung around the corner, heart rate jumped up a few extra beats as I saw the source. The thick stream led to the neck of a woman laying slumped ahead of me, blood seeped through my fingers.

      “He..he…he..” she rasped as I knelt neck to her. She looked more past me than up at me, and I reached around my waist to my med kit.

      “It’s alright,” I assured her. “I’m not one of them.”

      Seeing the desperation of one on the brink of death helped quash the fear and claustrophobia from my mind. I was gifted with pinpoint focus; the precision of my fingertips now was the difference between life and death.

      “He..he…he,”-

      “I know.”

      Her face was pale, the stream of blood leaked like the ocean coming through the rotted boards of a ship.

      I pulled out the bonding agent and tried to move the woman’s hand.

      “He…went…that way…”

      I paused and turned around looking down the mess of tilted doorways and scattered debris.

      “Please…help…him…”

      When I looked back, it was as if she’d never been alive to begin with. Her eye’s had taken on that dead and dark stare up at nothing. Her skin was white as milk, and her hand had fallen away showing the three parallel slashes across her jugular. I froze, stuck in the thought process between needing to hurry and realizing that it was too late to do anything. I found myself watching the blood trickle from the woman’s neck, and suddenly I angrily stuffed the bonding agent into my waist pouch.

She was my first loss; she wouldn’t be my last but she was the first person that had died without anything I could do. It brings crushing devastation to think you could have done something differently. What if I hadn’t waited in the corridor earlier? What if I hadn’t looked the way she’d pointed? What if I’d run instead of walked? All were meaningless thoughts after the fact, but as I shinned my light on that woman, all I could think was that she would remain in this dark crypt for years to come.

There will be losses, great losses. In war there must be for it to receive that name, without loss, it is a massacre. And no side has ever come out of a war without losing a single soldier. 

      It was the toughest of lessons. The woman wasn’t even a soldier, she wasn’t even of my people. But she was of my kind, and I’d failed her.

      When the child screamed again, I looked down the dark passage, it echoed once more from a dark void where my light didn’t even see the end. Yet I noticed I had no fear, now I had rage, and I set off into that dark abyss with my weapon held high looking for the monsters that had given this focus. My nostrils flared, my breathing like a bull’s ready to charge. And I charged into the third and final scream I’d hear from that little one.

      In a fight, you think of only one thing. That you have the power to control your survival. You are the almighty, you are the creator, the destroyer of this domain. You are the victor already; you just need to believe it.

      I heard shrieks and clattering not of the child anymore but of a Demon. I slung my rifle and looked up to see a dark abyss stretching high above me. I leaped for the ledge above and pulled myself up into a world that was now upright, and recognizable as a lobby. I heard the sound of nails on a chalkboard, the clattering of debris being slashed aside, and the flapping of a demon’s wings. The child was hiding inside a car that a hundred years ago had smashed into the lobby. The demon was there, its screeching and calls jabbed into my ears like gunshots.

      The boy was kicking it back, in his arms he was clutching a bundle of white blanket.

      “No!” he screeched.

      The demon had gotten a hook through the sole of his shoe. His fingernails dragged across nothing other than the rotting leather apostil.

      “Get off!”

      My first shot tore through its head. Its face suddenly froze mid-roar, its eye’s burned a sun-bright color and smoke drifted up from its ears. Its brothers and sister stared at it, and then the head popped like a balloon, their cat-like eyes turned to me.

      When you face your enemy, you must show them everything, your fear, anger, rage, and sorrow. When you engage in a fight against an animal such as this one, it will fight you bare. It will show you its full range of emotions, they will not hide from you, so you must not hide from them.

      I wasn’t scared then, I was angry, angry as I stared down the beasts that had robbed me and my people of a world, we’d called home for thousands of years. They’d turned our home to ash, to death and destruction, they were not of this world, and I would send them back to where they belonged.

      I roared, raining shots after them as they flapped their wings to get away. Rounds exploded with incendiary power off support pillars and the ceiling sending shards of tile, dust, and concrete in the air. The shrapnel ripped through one of the females’ wings, I recognized the darker tint to the skin folds. I roared a battle cry that I didn’t know was possible. I’d been so enraptured by the thrill of finally facing my enemy after months of travel that I forgot one of the most important lessons my father taught me.

      When in combat, never forget one is not invincible, always know your land of battle.

      A male of the species had been perched like a gargoyle outside on a lamppost. He’d seen me come marching out from the elevator shaft blasting its own and screaming like a mad woman. It swooped off its perch and flew through the broken glass opening and slammed into my side. If I hadn’t been wearing my armor, I’d have been cut in half. My ribs popped, and my breath was stolen as arms like steel bars wrapped around my torso and slammed me up into the ceiling. He dropped me back down onto the floor and my rifle skidded away from me.

The world turned to a blur for a moment, a grey splotch overtook my vision and when it all aligned, I was looking right into the face of a demon. Its face was oval shaped, its cat eyes set high without eyelids stared at me. Its teeth were needles that ran back into the curve of its throat. A dog-like muzzle was an inch away from my face. I’ll skip my father’s proverb on this one, and I’ll spare you the thinking behind why I’m able to write this story now and confirm one thing, I should be dead. The demon in that proximity could have easily latched on and flung me around the room like a wolf would do to a rabbit. Maybe it was the scent of the armor that threw it off, or the helmet and face shield I was wearing, but it hesitated. I didn’t.

I grabbed hold of that muzzle, wrenched it upward while at the same time drawing my side arm ramming it into the soft meat, and pulled the trigger. Its wings flapped and blood sprayed across the lobby behind it with a final muffled screech it fell on its back and its wings spasmed. I waited until it was completely limb before I let go, its mouth dropped open.

      To my right, the remaining demons roared, the female most of all.

      And one final note on fighting my daughter…you never leave it unfinished. When blood is drawn, you fight until there is no more left to give. Either yours, or theirs.

      I raised the side arm and fired right at the females gabbing mouth, her head swung back and suddenly the others started to flee. Their screeches like calls for retreat. I kicked my rifle up into my hands and let go with a burst that cut one out of the air with a fog of pink mist. I fired the under-barrel grenade launcher and the flechette round turned another beast into a shredded mess, it fell at the door. I approached it from behind, my breaths heaving, a single shot with my sidearm finished it and then I looked to the skies.  

      The shot echoed out like a period in the demon’s screeches. The grey overcast didn’t hold a single silhouette in it as the silence returned. Getting wrapped up in the fight had a way of distracting me it seemed, yet still I felt a sense of accomplishment. After all, I wasn’t out into The Barrens for fun, or to test my survival.

      A passage is essential for any royal, it is not about spirituality, nor is it even about knowing what your army will suffer, it is about life itself, seeing how it has changed, how it used to be, and what must be done to see it returned. You must know why we march, why we die, and what is important in the end.

      I holstered my weapon and walked to the car. He was scrunched inside of it, and it wasn’t until now I realized that the bundle of towel he held was crying. Short sniffles came from it.

      “You are alright,” I said to him.

      He didn’t come any closer, he stared at me with arms clutching the baby. I unclamped my helmet, and the scent of rot and mold filled my breath like soup. When my blonde hair spilled over my shoulders, I noticed that he seemed more relaxed, perhaps I reminded him of his mother, I’d hope so. He reminded me of my son.

      “Come here,” I ushered I tried to be both commanding and motherly in the same tone. “I won’t hurt either of you.”

      “The door…it won’t.”

      I gripped the side of it and yanked, the metal bent and snapped under the suit's power and I flung it to the side.

      “Here, let me take her,” I said.

      He seemed nervous; already a good older brother. I smiled at him with open arms.

      “I promise, I won’t drop her.”

      “You are a Knight…” he said like he was afraid of the word.

      “I am…but I’ve children of my own. I know how to be delicate with them.”

      He hesitated a moment longer, and when the child came into my arms, I was suddenly overcome with this sense of fragileness from it. She was small, so small that she couldn’t be more than two months old if that. That poor mother, I thought. To have to endure the birth of a child only to realize it was hell itself you brought it into, and then to die not knowing whether it would live to see a full trip around the sun. I will see them back to Camelot safe, I thought. I hoped she could hear me, truly I did.

      We walked out of the ruined city some two hours later, I killed a few more demons on the outskirts but after that, we walked the roads of the old world till nightfall. I gave them the last of my rations and built the boy and his sister a fire. He carried her for every mile we traveled.

      We are all brothers and sisters in the land we live in now, whatever fights we had in the past are nothing compared to the ones we face now. All must be raised knowing this unity, for it is the lack of it that saw our fall centuries ago.

      I could feel his eyes on me as the flame warmed my face, his sister was asleep in a fresh blanket we’d found in our travels. There was a sense of wonder in his eyes, as well weariness.

still unsure of what his path held for him. But he would be alright, I’d see to it he was given the right guidance and help when we returned to Camelot the next day.

      We approached The Border at just after sunrise, the wind came over the high wall that stretched for miles until it shrunk on either side. The barren desert lay behind us, the anti-air guns that shot demons out of the sky ran along its top edge like sentries of medieval times.

      The boy stood behind me, head posed upward with his sister tucked tightly in his hands.

      Ahead of us, the steel gate lowered with the ringing of an alarm. I stood tall and kept my head held high as I knew he was there. There was a way that the air changed, a sense of power that was both frightening and comforting at the same time. I saw the tanks first. The boy cowered behind me at the sight of them. And standing between them, was my father. He walked out with stiff steps as his cane held his body, his long white beard and white hair blew backward as the wind traveled over us.

      He stopped just shy of me, his face at first blank and emotionless looked me up and down. He’s inspecting me, I thought. Questioning if I’d come back the person I needed to be. Then suddenly a smile appeared on his face, he looked at me with eyes that radiated proudness. I couldn’t help but smile back.

      When you return you will come back not only as my daughter but as one worthy of your title. I will see you as one who has earned the right to lead our armies to war, to travel across these harsh lands knowing I can trust you to keep charging, I will see you as more than just a daughter, you will be our empress, our leader, the tip of our spear, and my replacement.

      He opened his arms wide, the smile radiating like a long-awaited reunion.

      “My Empress,” he nodded.

      I wrapped my arms around my father, holding him tight like I did as a little girl again. He looked around me while rubbing my back to the boy and baby.

      “And who are these weary travelers?”

      The boy held his sister tight, still guarding her like his mother had wanted. My father gave me a final back pat and walked closer to him.

      “You are right to guard her so dearly my boy, but you need not fear, you are in the land of your own now, the demons dare not fly here.”