Security Chief Kerral (cc: Head of Security Phloupostrophe).
I’ve been to the ritual site. It’s too late to dissuade them, stop them, cancel the purchase, do anything about them. It was all there. The guillotine – conceptually linked to both of them so strongly. The little snag of reversed time, to run the separation in reverse. The little beads of superconductive solder, to allow them to run the transfer without any interference. The holy metal salts, that they cast into each other’s respective fires to exchange their fates. It’s done. They’ve done the exchange.
There’s no sign of them in the Store any more, so either they’re in the Warehouse somewhere – unlikely, but not impossible I guess – or they’ve gone back to their homeworld. I caught them on camera, though, picking their way through the ruined atrium. They do look different. It’s not just their bodies – although, as we thought, there’s traces of their old forms – but the way that Ashen Liberty and the Searing Queen carry themselves is somehow different to what they were before. They’ve exchanged everything – identity, power, souls – so what is it that’s stayed, that’s making them different? I don’t know. I was never a metaphysician, boss.
Asymmetric Warfare. Security Officer.
O solitary ember, wand’ring free
High above the fire, swallowed near by night
We wish your safe return, but far off see
Your untrammelled path, dark but for your light.
Without you we’re bereft, forlorn, alone
Shiv’ring, unsafe, but far afield out there:
Fly free, our queen, and make your glory known
Conquering regent of the smoke filled air.
For, clutching after you, our hands are scorched,
Burned quick. Your tyrant raiments us remind
Fire should't be made safe, containèd, caught.
You lead, we follow, bearing your train behind.
We miss you when you’re gone; rue when you’re here;
Our Searing Queen, object of our love and fear.
- Anonymous, The Exaltations of the Searing Queen, Sonnet 17.
The Exaltations are the product of an unknown poet and bard of middling skill, operating in the Burning Queendoms c.1533. They follow the dramatic change in the monarch's behaviour following her ascension from Searing Ash to Burning Queen, and her newfound interest in multiverse travel. The social/psychic wrench that this represented - a former tyrant ever-present, turned flighty and prone to sudden unexpected voyages into the unknown, before returning without warning - is believed by most scholars to have inspired the work.
CW: violent injury descriptions.
The footage isn’t in great condition any more. It skips frames, judders, and in places is bleached almost to nothingness by constant rewinds and re-examinations. The decrepitude, though, comes from love, not carelessness or disuse. It’s the damage done to an old favoured teddy bear, or a comforting childhood blanket.
It begins with a long, panning shot across the field of battle. The Queen has deployed her forces to quell an uprising, sparked by rumours of Ashen Liberty. They gleam in the rare summer sun; armour lambent with orange-hot forge-glow, mail and helms glittering in perfect serried ranks as they advance. The Searing Queen herself has eschewed her favoured palanquin, and stalks forward at the head of her legions, radiant, burning, terrible. A gemstone in a blast furnace.
Before her, covering the retreat of their allies, are the Coo-coos. They have deployed from a trio of Freedom Barques, hanging in the air above, where our camera operator is watching from. They are losing, of course. Brave, driven, daring as they are, they cannot hope to stop the Queen’s advance, only slow her, buy some time, for the rebels to retreat.
But there, in the middle of their line – closest to the Queen’s position – the retreat slows. Someone pushes their way forward – or rather allows the others to fall back around them – and the camera zooms wildly, refocuses on the figure striding out to meet the Searing Queen.
She looks a little like a dying willow tree. Her moth-like wings are moulting, disintegrating, ragged; her gait is stiff with mechanical exoskeletal support; what once might have been a graceful bearing is hidden beneath the armour plating and bandoliers, a pair of shattered pieces of a copper emblem pinned to her breast. Her remaining eye is set in determination as she unslings her flute and makes her way towards the foe.
We see the Searing Queen more closely now. A rare sight. Collectors across the multiverse would kill for a good-quality image of she whose radiance blinds observers, and who to look upon is to fall to one’s knees in fealty. Sharp-featured, sculptural, skin like ancient bronze, almost a silhouette against the pale ash behind her. Every heroic statue, every exhortion to serve, toil, increase production by 15% - they are all present in her bearing, in the effortless way she carries herself.
She smiles as the Coo-coo champion approaches. Her teeth – sharp, long, uncountable – glow like embers.
’You’re looking at me like I should recognise you.’
A step closer. Yntessa, first-among-equals of the Carmine Flutes, elite shock troops of the Reformed Justice Caucus, brandishes the flute in one hand, as ancient moonlight curls around the other.
’Oh, no, Queen. You wouldn’t. But I recognise you. I made a promise to an old friend to be here. To fight this fight, no matter what.’
’Is that s –‘
The Searing Queen’s grin splits wider, impossibly wider – but the moment of glee is enough for Yntessa to dart in, land a blow. The Queen is knocked flying, but, when the camera refocuses on her, we see that she is delighted at this development. Picking herself to her feet, the flesh of her hands peeling back to reveal seizing, burning claws – she leaps into the fray.
It’s hard to follow what happens next. The Queen cuts loose, and there is a savage, primal joy to her movements that draws her forward, cackling with the sheer release of it all. She is happy to be here, fighting for her empire, for her people, against a worthy foe. Yntessa stands her ground, but – for all of her sorcerous trickery, she is losing, wings curling and blackening against the Searing Queen’s heat.
Soon, she’s fighting from one knee, only barely batting away the other’s clawing strikes. The Queen shortly disarms her of her flute, holds her to a yield – that she feigns consideration of for just long enough to lash out with a hidden knife, scoring a gash across the tyrant’s leg. With a snarl, the Searing Queen sinks her claws into her foe’s throat, pulling her up.
’Thank you, Yntessa … whoever you are. You’ve proven a worthy foe, but I can’t let you threaten the peace, glory, and, most importantly, safety of my Queendoms any longer.’ A pained, wheezing chuckle. ‘I worked hard for this place, you know.’
The camera – almost at the limit of its zoom – closes on the two of them. Despite being on death’s door, Yntessa contorts her face, and manages to mouth out her last words.
THANK – YOU – LIBERTY
FOR – EVERYTHING – WE – BOTH – ARE
THANK – – YOU
The tape cuts out. The Coo-coo recruits, gathered round the projector in the heart of the Old Freedom bus, blink, blearily look at each other. Some have tears on their faces. Some are resentful – that movie night is over already. But among all of them, there’s a kind of animated hope and enthusiasm. Seeing the martyrdom of their old leader hasn’t dissuaded them at all – it’s just filled them with a kind of renewed zeal. Each of them is looking forward to Orpiment Haze’s intelligence briefing tomorrow morning. And soon – soon they’ll head out, each one a tiny kindled torch of liberty. Of liberation.