( The Third continuation of my story between Val and Nazareth. The language will be mild, but there will be violent depictions. )



"And I'd say!—" Shouted Nazareth over the crowd. Most heads turned, looked up and, unbelievably focused, spread the disturbance to the idle, to the empty, to the previously focused eyes of the dull-eared with either shoulder-slaps or simple words. Nazareth stood tall on the angled roof: her smile was brilliant, diabolical; her eyes were wide and mirrored the piercing lividity of her smile; her scarf wailed and her bare feet stuck to the tiles, side-by-side. "—that you as well, Peddler of the Word, do not understand their resilience!"

The crowd remained silent and allstaring until Nazareth ripped the blade out of her belt and held it over her head. With the downlow and extinguished purple sun grazing the curved steel, Nazareth appeared to wield violet flame in her hand. "Whatever contracts you think protect you will shield you no longer, Brides of dust." The arm that prided her blade fell limply, quickly, and the sharpened end smashed into the roof, cut it up with a metallic wail and a burst of soot that rose from the split old tile roofing and became purple.

"My sister hangs," Nazareth said quietly. The gatherers may not have heard, but each-and-every grew visibly anxious. "Here—-there it is." She advanced the nose of her sword, used it to point out the pillar. Blade sustained as example, she petitioned her audience with a wide, scoping glance. "Is this what satisfies children of the dust' My sister was no warrior—-she was sick from birth. Each of her nineteen years of life were spent in agony. Her body failed in the Flat Sea—-there, out beyond your very gates—-no more than an hour's walk. She sought razor shrub seeds and obsidian—-she was no monster, Brides. She left home to collect a handful of seeds for her garden. But you are all sufficiently intoxicated on a victory, yes" Prided by your monument and ornamental body?"

The crowd was still. The Dominion's question was vetoed in silent unison: She demanded no answer, this much was clear. Her verdict and judgement had been determined the minute that pillar was plastered into the sand and uncovered. Closest to the building upon which Nazareth stood was a frail, gaunt woman who had a little girl latched around her thigh. The child, who was guilty of nothing more than presence, was big-eyed and dark haired. Mundane like all Brides maybe, but yet unmined; yet bathed in the liquor of diluted history. She smiled.

Nazareth's slender eyes drifted to the pulpit. She growled quietly, "But I am a warrior," before hoisting her blade high above her windy hair and cracking scarf. Nazareth hollared, "I'll make you all such tributes! Want to celebrate a corpse! I'll give your capital a hundred of them to celebrate!"



The people below berserked. Riotous howls, both low and masculine and sharp and young, flooded the village square. Thunder in the form of escaping feet assaulted the air, mixed with the screams and made a storm. The small rank of soldiers that had taken station near the foot of the pillar drew shield and steel. They conformed and took an advanced post in front of the pulpit and the towering trunk. The monument's slender, deathblack shadow severed the crowd, crawled up the face of the building Nazareth was stationed upon and lay draped next to her shyly, sisterly: brown and quiet and skinny and dead. Nazareth thrusted the violet-sun blade up over her head. The Priest flapped his flowing arms, his flowing tongue, informed his congregation of their rights, of their triumphs, of the treaty, of the impossibity of attack: "They Cannot! They Will Not!"

I am not "They?.

I am Nazareth.

Nazareth hit the pulpit like a rocket. Her body decimated the platform, smashed right into it, shoulder-first and at high-speed, and sent the Old Preacher sailing backwards. The sand was soft, but impact in such a way, at such a speed, did no service to his old body. And when he finally came to rest after skidding almost ten yards through the biting dust, the Old Preacher pushed his hands deep into the sand, arched his elbows and pushed, but there was no motion, only pain. He gave up. Now-mussed ropes of old, gray hair lay all over his face, law strewn all over the sand and soot. The Priest groaned when he moved his arm; pain there, just in moving it: It's broken. Everything-— Each limb reacted similarly: resistance to movement and sharp, coursing pain. Even the man's diagnosis, poor as it was, could not truly illuminate the severity of his injuries. He had a punctured lung that even now was flooding blood into his cavities and making his mouth moist with a rusty syrup. This battery, however, bred a fear that was easily usurped by the smooth, wicked calling of his assailant. Visibility was limited inside the cloud, but proximity vanquished the unseen. Nazareth approached the fallen priest with her blade drawn and low; she dragged it as if a child who could not bear its weight, letting the tip cut through the sand behind her. "Stay still, old prophet," she said absently as she paused and scanned the area. When she dropped her slender crimson eyes, his old, half-blind milky whites ascended to contest, fear all washed up in them. Nazareth crouched at his side; he whimpered and tried to scuttle, but his body would not abide. "Shhh—-be still. That is what I said, yes". Your body—-it's busted. Completely." A wolfish grin infected her jaw. She scanned the man, foot-to-scalp, then said, "All this fear—-why' You put my sister up on a stake to show all these people how powerful your great Empire is, just how far you'd all come. To show them just how little there was to fear. But you did not believe it, did you? The picture behind the picture: you understand how absurd it is, do you not' To hang up the body of a child to prove the power of your unified nation and ecclesial influence" Hah—-absurd, no' "Look at what we have done! Slayed a child—-a sick and dying one at that! In fact, we found her dead—-this is our power!—-they simply drop dead in terror!"

Nazareth hung back her head and laughed aloud, laughed so hard her entire slender body wracked and shuddered. When she calmed the smile stayed, vibrant, infinite, and a sweet, warm. feminine coo warbled in her throat. She stood up and flicked her right hand to throw sand off her blade. Her expression stiffened: pretty as a doll but harsh as a heretic, eyes of fire slender as they examined the puddling old prophet. He had tried twice more to crawl away, and not only had he again gotten nowhere, the strenuous movements had brought blood to his lips. Files of thick, black blood curled over his lip and ended in the splintered, silver roots of his beard. When she lifted her blade his mouth shrieked but no sound came.

"Take solace in the fact that you're life was basically over anyway," said Nazareth emptily. "Perhaps you'll get the purge you so desperate sought, old prophet of the dust. Maybe the next time the world spins us into morning more of our children will hang from your pillars."

The girl's elbow snapped like a loaded spring and the blade rioted through the dusty air like a silver beam. The cut was clean, was so precise and swift that it did not, at first, appear to have even struck the priest. It opened in red finally, congealed across his neck until it looked as though she'd tied a red ribbon around it, then sprayed what blood had sat pressurized in his throat into the air with a hiss.

Nazareth lamed her arm and the nose of her blade crashed into the sand. Dead, coarse eyes inspected the corpse. At last she smiled. She said, "When I hangyour children from the pole, I promise to at least do them the service of inscribed names. " The Dominioness curtseyed, sheathed her weapon and turned herself towards the smoke that was clearing near the ruined pulpit. Five broadshouldered forms were working through.

Because their faces were buried in the blocking cage of their steel helmets, each of Marcius" men appeared stoic and statuesque when Nazareth's demand roared over the dusty field. None moved. none spoke. Marcius himself was lost in a pocket of time somewhere else, in some time when his voice moved men towards an attainable objective; lied to them, made them high maybe, but there was always a goal, always a chance. Marcius took a step forward and hoisted his chin. "If that is your final demand, then I of course offer myself to be your opponent," he said. His arms loosened, his knees crunched, his shoulders melted, eased. A wiry smile swept over his jaw like a macabre wave, something of a badge of confidence ironed within a ribbon of certain death. He spoke from that smile: "None of us are afraid of you, child. I respect what you are capable of, do not take that as an insult. But I saw the very worst of it all during the war—-I am no great warrior, but I will not fold easily. If my blood will satiate you—-will spare my men—-then come and get it." "I won't be damned to a final minute of contest," came a voice from over Marcius" shoulder. When the commander turned he squinted at the approach of one his men, the tallest of the quartet with wild blonde hair that rained from every accommodating crevice of his steel helmet. "Marcius!" He yelled, not longer advancing. "Sir! You can't be serious—" "Enough," Marcius said; his voice was beaten. "Why criticize me for taking task" None of you are experienced enough to do combat with Dominion. Fall back in line," he said with a vicious stab with his left hand, finger out and pointing at the three remaining men who were still in formation. "Now."

The tall, blonde soldier did not move. For a moment his head lowered as if the order had been received, but when it jolted back up his body advanced, and fast, towards Marcius. The commander lifted his sword arm but not in a manner relaying the threat of strike, it was rather a diagonal raise, signalling a halt. The blonde soldier pushed Marcius" arm away with both of his hands and continued forward, where the men best approximated Nazareth's voice. Marcius did not bother to corral him. His strict, slender eyes only watched revolt in motion. The Commander offered only: "You can't understand—-" "All I understand," roared the rebel blonde, reverting his body around so that he could pummel Marcius with his rioting tone. "is that I wasn't born, wasn't raised, haven't lived to this point in my life to wager what?s left of it on the game with a child of the void, commander! I'll die with my blade high and shield low—-that's what I was taught." Marcius" lips began to form words, but a sparkle in the dust, maybe twenty yards away, frightened his face and forbade his words. It was silver streak screaming across the sand like a star cruising across the sky, growing larger, approaching he and his man at a speed that broke his thoughts and cried, "action!?, in his ears. And he did act. Marcius leapt forward and wrapped both arms around the tall blonde's armored hips. Wracked and confused, the blonde tried to wrestle free, dropping both his shield and sword so that he could bear-down on his commander's shoulders, so that he could claim balance and throw him off him. Marcius was a strong man, but was not a specimen suitable for the movement of a man such the size as his rebellious soldier. His internal clock rang aloud and he had no choice but to forfeit his lock on the blonde's hips. Marcius instead pushed off and dove to the side. There was something of a seconds-shard between Marcius dive and the impact of the anomaly he had spied congealing in the sand. It was Nazareth's blade—-Marcius was sure of it now, for it was now jutting out of his soldier's belly, but hands free—-there was no sign of the young Dominioness: she'd thrown her weapon from the seclusion of the whipping sands beyond.

Minus the incapacitated Marcius, the small regiment was rounded down to two: The short one with the shield, and the one with that had seconded the longswordsman. This man, who also sported a shield, as well as a shortsword, gawked at the child warrior with gigantic green eyes that beamed from the deep shade of his helmet like lanterns on the hills in a faraway night. He would take a step forward, move his boot maybe an inch, then, before the toe would crush new sand in advance, retract it. The shield he carried was diamond in shape and made of black, dirty iron; he laid the end of his blade across the crowning ridge of the shield, as both protection and threat. Nazareth stood up slowly. When she was upright, the young Dominioness tipped back her head and her hair, now unbothered by the wind, for it had calmed, spilled off her crown like molten ropes of silver. Her fine, sharp nose peaked; her loud, sanguine eyes closed; a smile formed.

The soldier with the bright green eyes, with his blade resting over his shield, lurched forward. When he caught the girl perching with her eyes closed his palms became greased in sweat, his lungs became bloated with fierce, spiky air and his heart and head recieved sudden injections of faulted pleasure, of some blundered information that cried in riot, cried in opportunity. His boots smacked over the deep sand, equipment rattling as he charged in metallic smacks and chimes. Nazareth didn't move. Green Eye's final stomp brought him within three feet of the everlasting Nazareth. It was in his mind that he would begin with a quick thrust, but a sudden milding of courage changed hands. Instead of opening his defenses by moving his shied away so that he thrust, Green Eyes decided to lower his shoulder and extend his shield-arm in an attempt bash the girl in the chin with his blackiron plate. The energetic girl dipped right below the charging shield with that instantaneous haste, raised her right arm and, now between Green Eyes and the shield, placed her hand on the inside of the plate. The shield was simple in design: ironplate on the face, leather on the back with a single handle for the hand. Nazareth shot to her feet, her head appearing between Green Eye's chest and the shield he'd extended, then fired her arm back. The flattened hand she'd placed on interior exploded into the leather lining and forced the shield back, out of Green Eye's grasp ( The speed afforded Green Eyes no reaction time; three fingers got caught in the handle, and when Nazareth punched the shield away those three snapped off like brittle twigs ). Green Eyes had yet to feel or notice. When at last his lagging eyes rendered the silver flame of Nazareth's wild hair, he reacted by driving his blade down diagonally, an oblong strike directed at the young Dominioness" shoulder. For the first time since the sorties genesis, Nazareth was caught off balance. Later she would rationalize it as "Combat at a speed too fierce for those of mundane blood; I struck too fast for them to even feel their own damn broken fingers?. She did, however, evade Green Eye's strike by bending her body all the way back, so far that she fell onto her side with a bright, furious groan. The completion of Green Eye's swing was dotted by a stumble as all his weight had been levied into it and it struck nothing. The girl was down, and had he not been so certain that there had been no recoil in his hand, he might have thought he'd made contact. It was when he tried to bring his left hand in to second his grip on the hilt that violent thrusts of electric pain shot through his wrist, screamed up his arm and numbed his shoulder. Green Eyes crashed down onto a knee, dropped his blade and in wide-open agony examined his two-fingered hand. All that remained were index and thumb. The pinky, ring and middle were torn-down in various locations, with the middle sporting the greatest remainder (about half with a knife-like bone, thoroughly bloodied, sharply protruding). Ribbons of redblack wrapped up his wrist and the bottom of his arm, ran to about the elbow and careened off, causing drip. The blood began to collect in sticky, embossed bulbs in the sand near his down knee.

Some time after the death of the green eyed soldier, Marcius had sat up. He'd collapsed just beside the tall blonde, the soldier's whose body was shrunk and curled, decrepit and doomed to be eternally stilted by the tip of Nazareth's weapon, for it was this stand that made it unable for the blonde to roll over onto his belly. Marcius looked at his arm. It was unusual for a soldier, an officer especially, to be on duty without armored sleeves of some kind, whether it be a simple chainmail or even leather: he found the added weight a detriment. And perhaps he could admit that procedure might have supplied salvation for his arm, but what he couldn't admit to his men earlier was what cruised over his brain now, like a comet, ear-to-ear: they really hadn't stood a chance, not ever. The man narrowed his eyes and examined the ruined arm. Again, the speed of it all diluted his recollections. He figured particulars were pointless, but a hearty lack of understanding fertilized an uneasiness in his chest.

'One thing to be shaken with the understanding you'll have tomorrow to contemplate it," he thought. "Another completely to be torn down like a beast with the understanding you have but minutes left of your life to diagnose."

Marcius, who was smiling slightly, pushed himself to his feet. The task was arduous given his condition (it was one thing to suffer a broken bone, another entirely to suffer a pummeling of tendon, muscle and, ultimately, resolve), but rickety, unwilling legs found ground, and Marcius found himself upright. To his right, Short Shield was dying, but Marcius didn't turn. The sound of a blade running up into a man's throat was one he'd heard several times before, and because of the uniformity of these instances he dared not look.

When Short Shield collapsed, Nazareth's view of Marcius was no longer obstructed. Her arms limp at her side, her legs straight, taut, her posture perfect, she looked on the man with a skinny, distasteful gaze. "And that?" she said cheerfully as she began a slow stroll towards the far-looking commander. "Too weak of stomach to watch, Master Marcius" I offer my apologies—-I often forget how easily you all break." Marcius looked down; his smile didn't flee. With his left hand, he began brushing caked sand and soot off his shirt. "I understand," he said in a raised, but even tone.

Nazareth paused. Her face collapsed in on itself, imploded into a rancorous webbing of wrinkle and over-lip teeth. "Don't act calm, damn you. Don't you dare."

A hand on his scruffed jaw, Marcius shrugged his eyebrows, smiled a bit more sharply then turned to look the Dominioness in the face. "I'm sorry, child, but what I said earlier was no boast: I'm not afraid of you. I really can't explain what it is—-perhaps it's your face" Out there—-" Marcius indicated the village square, where the congregation had stood, where the pulpit presided, where the priest spoke, by lifting his chin to the north. "—-you heard The Speaker talk of my involvement in the war: that was no lie. I was at Roan, child. I was one of the ten—-the story is true. I'm sure that is no surprise to you, but in Ionosis, the tale has been doctored considerably. A normal Dominion is a forced to be reckoned with, I understand: But. . . but her—-The one that stood ahead, the one they all call "Maetron". You remind me of her.?

Whether he'd simply broken concentration, or acted of conscious volition was unknown to Nazareth, but after her brother dropped his head the manacles of sand loosened from her wrist and ankles, melted away back to the desert floor. The girl had a simple and weakly angered expression. Her hair and face were still peppered with the notes of blood that had dripped out of Green Eye's split-open head. She said, "I'll look at it. If I were talented with a brush, I'd paint it. If I were skilled with a quill, I'd write about it." Three long, furied steps brought Nazareth to her brother. She knelt to make eyes, but he wouldn't look up. "And if my body didn't require sustenance or sleep, and if our mother hadn't put me in charge of making sure you don't end up hung from the pole like our sister, I would do it every hour of every day for the rest of my life, Valcroix. I would kill their parents, everyday, and I would kill their children, everyday, and I would kill them. Every. Day. I think I would keep a dozen or so as pets and make them breed just so I could keep killing them, Valcroix."

Val's head shot up, as did both his hands. Agony and an insatiable rancor flaming in his eyes, the dark haired boy snatched his sister by the throat then kicked off the ground so that he could position himself atop her. He tried to jerk her head, tried to press his thumbs into her windpipe, tried lifting and smashing, but when a fresh screen of tears were disbanded by a blink, his unblurred vision rendered the image of a girl unphased. Val was Dominion, but he was not cut from the same cloth as Nazareth. Not only did he not have the physical strength to strangle her this day, he ventured that he could come back to this very moment in time three hundred years from now and still not possess the power to do so. He released her neck by shoving into it, pushing himself up. Nazareth stood soon after and adjusted her scarf. Marcius had taken himself back down to a knee. During Val's advance and the subsequent argument that followed, he'd watched, he'd felt something when the boy spoke, but he was quite sure the sun had set on him. But Valcroix made Marcius the center of his next assault. Pointing him out, and with a strained, crushed gaze leveling his sister, he said, "You're not killing him. You won't." Nazareth was still picking sand out of the welcoming fabric of her scarf. A smile formed; she rejected him with a shake of her head. "No. I just murdered four soldiers wearing Bride regalia, Valcroix. Brave Master Marcius over there will have the Capital's armed forces mobilized in a weeks time. As much fun as that sounds, mother won't allow it."

"Nazareth—-you just killed their Speaker in front of the entire village. And if you think I'm going to let you decimate what?s left of this village, you're dead wrong. I'll cover it in steel; I'll stand guard until my body dies from exhaustion. Then you can explain that to mother."

The boy's sister rewrapped her scarf, smiled when it was snug, then again shook her head. "Not a problem," she said simply. "Brides love relishment—-the leader of their towns, their clans, always live in the most lavish houses. I'll simply pay their leader a visit before our leave and explain to him that what I did, I did as an act of retaliation for the murder of our sister. And if I sense that he does not believe me, I will threaten to vanquish his bloodline. And if I still sense that he does not believe me, then I will do just that. Besides—-no simple towns mayor out here on the rim wants to be the currier for war—-our remaining tribes will strike this area first. I'll swear that there will never be a Dominion presence in this town again."

Hastened by the cool, logical explanation, Val hurried over to Marcius. "Well—-he won't say anything either. Right?" Hopefully, the boy looked down to Marcius and began nodding his head, hoping to beckon replication from The Commander.

A smile, long and wise, developed on Marcius" scruffy jaw. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "No. Those four men mean—-meant—-more to me than my silence; than some shallow escape. If you two left right now, I would bury what?s left, then make the march to Ionosis and file my findings. I'd have no choice, boy." "Nazareth," Val said. "Don't. You told me before that Mother has pull in the city—-she won't let something like this bring everyone to war again. If they really fear her like you say they do, then they wouldn't dare."

The grinning hellioness began to slow stroll over to the downed blonde who still had her blade captured in his belly. "I'm sorry, Val," she said sweetly on her way past. Shrugging, she looked at the boy with a catty grin. "Can't you see that brave Master Marcius wants to be with his brethren?" She paused near the commander, bent over and poked his chin. "What is it you call your deity again? Arias" He is represented as the sun, yes" "The Man with The Fire in his Eye"—-that's from one of your hymnals, yes" Do you pray to him now?" She stood up then kicked over the blonde, snagged the hilt of her weapon and jerked it out of his belly.

"Nazareth—-if you spare him, I'll be yours forever. I'll stop wandering away from home, stop making you waste your days searching for me. I know you have better things to do. I'll stay at home, letting you go out to do whatever. I swear it—-I'll do—"

"You're a liar," his sister hissed.

Val tied his hands together and shook his head. "No, I swear it. I'll read, I'll—-I'll continue work on Pilot's garden. I won't leave home. I'll listen to Judace's lectures, whatever you want, so you can go out to do whatever it is you want to do without mother chastising you when I slip away from home. Please. I'm begging you."

Near Marcius, Nazareth flung her blade out towards him, but did not strike, simply pointed him out. "And on what guarantee" I won't lie, that is a delicious offer, but up to this point, you've yet to keep your word over a simple childrens" game, over the simplest and most meaningless of things. You're a born liar, Valcroix. You were born that way, and you'll always be that way."

"I'm begging you."

Scowling, Nazareth turned her arm around so that the pommel of her weapon faced Marcius, then jerked her arm forward and struck the commander on the side of his head, just north of his temple. After a throaty groan, he fell over, limp and unconscious. Nazareth immediately fell down to her knees, pushed Marcius so that his chest was flat and up, then reached into his leather vest. Pinned to the interior was circular pendant of gold: it was the Bride Arms Regalia, worn by all soldiers devout to the capital. It was a symbol of the very god Nazareth had mocked, Arias. The Brides symbolize him with a half-circle ( representation of the sun, or "Arias" ) with five arrows launching as-if sunrays. Above the arrows is the crescent moon, an allegorical reference to Arias" defeat of the darkness. Next she marched over to the dead blonde, reached into his vest and snatched his pendant. When she stormed passed Val on her way to collect the three remaining pins, she chirped, "He'll live."

When she had five pendants in total, Nazareth began to untie her scarf. When it was undone, she knelt down and unfolded it. Pinned to the interior, usually secluded from a folding, were thirty-two pendants, just like the ones she'd just taken off Marcius and his men. The ranks were even and all pinned in clean, perfect rows. She spoke as she went to work filing her latest insignias: "Just know that if you break the promise you just made to me, I'll spend the rest of my life making you pay for it." She found him with her eyes. "I mean it. If you run away, I'll find you. If you take refuge in the capital, I'll storm the gates and tear the streets asunder until I find you. If you marry, I'll kill your wife. If you flee this very world, I'll run across the stars in search of you. And if you marry a goddess, I'll spend every day cutting her to bits, just to watch her reassemble so that I can cut her some more."

Val was sitting crosslegged in the sand a few yards away from Nazareth with his back turned on her. He said nothing.

"A hefty price to pay for the life of one bedamned Bride, Val. What is it about them that fascinates you so?"

"It's nothing about them personally," he said. "I just think we owe them a little more than murder. You look at things from only a single angle—that of persecution, because it's all you know. But you are young. Look at them as a whole: A Dominion lives easily ten-times longer than a Bride; we have a better understanding of all things. Step back even further—-you just can't see."

"Oh' And what is it I'm not seeing?"

"Their lives are so short, that they never see the light of their actions. If a man was born at twilight and was damned to a life of only six hours, he would not even know the sun existed."

When the fifth pendant was in place, Nazareth smiled and began the careful procedure of folding up her scarf. She said, "I'll show them The Sun."

(Thanks to all who read—-this little thread received way more views than I'd anticipated. It may have been hard to follow for you who haven't played with me before or understand the lore and backstory of the characters, so I appreciate all that made it this far. Feel free to PM me with questions or concerns. Thanks. ))