 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ | The fires had been dampened and order had been obtained, but at what cost when another Soldier had gone missing?
It was going on weeks now, and she wasn’t quite sure what that meant when time was this inevitable circumstance of fate and destiny that rode her subconscious mercilessly through every day, every second, every beat of her stoned-walled heart that flagged behind her rapidly accelerating thoughts. Scenarios, possibilities of what went wrong, the bitter seed of could-have-been plaguing her countenance into a drawn tight-lipped frown when a courier had arrived, delivered the news, and carried on as if the coiling thread of impending death hadn’t been loosely scrawled through curling penmanship of a lazily hand-written letter. As a mere whisper of, by the way, here lies Sergeant Alex Meyer, host of Buvelle, a forsaken hero who rose and fell and smiled cruelly every time he descended. Or ascended, for that matter. He was an eccentric man who bore stubborn teeth lined rigidly through a smirk, a defier, a rebel, a wild sort of Ace-up-the-sleeve in a game of cards when their reality was mocking lines of a chess board. Serviceable pawns and dashing knights, stalwart towers and rounded bishops, and above them all: a King.
And then, the Queen. Shadowed in the crown of the almighty, but far more ruthless in the regalia of her darkness.
Elowen curled a lock of red hair over her finger, tugged, and ignored the smarting sting of nails sliced into her palm; ruby smiles that would glare back at her, wounds of a complex, her anxiety, her tethered and secured emotions, that fluctuated and fluttered whenever he was near.
She hated him for it.
Even so, there was none else that could slither through the veneer of her unwavering justice, the stoic warrior traded for the soft dame of a woman, a lift of a smile to charm her features even when bathed in blood. Yue rumbled through her soul, igniting the light of her dark, coal eyes with a hidden sheen of a holy surge, a pinprick in the void of her ruthless cunning as another day passed and still no news came of Alex’s whereabouts. Elowen wakes with the dawn and coils her copper hair into a braid as she often does. She had been assigned to the barracks near eastern command, private quarters a forgone luxury until she resumed her post at Junon near the central tower: a sky-piercing, gargantuan facility that Palmecia gilded and garbed with the latest technology, and the latest investments of Soldiers to protect its borders. Elowen was such a dominant, even if not the newest generation. However, her connection to Yue (an ancient even in the graces of most Aeons) and her family name of Sloane garnered her a coveted seat and housing unit. It was, as Alex had once uttered, a burden of legacy in the light of her father’s name, a man entangled deep into the political court of Palmecia, their family villa a seat of true pomposity and manipulation under The Agenda’s favorable dogma. Elowen had not seen him in years and denied all invitations to their soirees hosted through every interchanging season, it didn’t do well that her father particularly loathed Alex either, for whatever reason. It certainly did not assist that they had been paired together for such an extended time, a partnership that glided outside normalcy with Soldier delegations and duties. Pairs came and went, but Elowen and Alex had always been different, even when rotated through solitary stations, sometimes being sectioned to opposite ends of Palmecia, they had found their way back to each other by grace of command or the unnatural magnetism of their selves that was in a constant ebb and flow.
She poured into her uniformed leathers with ease and grace, laced, buckled, and secured, weapons slid into place, suspension units weighted into her armor that allowed long, twin daggers down her spine, not quite the length of short-swords, but forged into elongated extensions that defied traditional measurements. Dirks, Alex had called them, double-edged, straight blades that tapered to wicked points. They weren’t uniform or regulation, and she had more strapped and hidden into the bands around her waist and the fortified armor on her ribs. Elowen carried exactly seven blades, an eighth weapon, hidden in her braided hair, was a sliver of a weighted stick, melded into a point and often mistaken for an adornment. None ever saw it coming.
Today, she was patrolling the southern districts again. She had already scoured them all before, and she had done so many times over. However, a recent report of red-robed figures patrolling decommissioned warehouses (and there were at least fifty of them) had been graciously submitted to her review, and without leave, Elowen had delegated herself to the hunt.
It’s not like they could stop her anyway.
His disappearance was now her problem and as the holy blade of All Law and keeper of balance, Elowen had devised it to the need for order, an order she maintained religiously and Yue’s unyielding influence that sluiced through leagues of blood and bone, as a creature of unfettered worship, that demanded things be put back into their place. Or was it Buvelle that Yue hunted and craved, the trickster Aeon having avoided its dominion as its polar opposite for all the years they had been paired? It was a peculiar thought as Elowen boarded a private transport, an unassumingly designed carrier remotely operated (as most tech was designed for now, all computerized artificial intelligence, and that didn’t even entail the scope of Artificial Aeon intelligence) that dropped her off close to the southern districts where she resumed on foot, crossing through one of many gates that were no longer manned or maintained, abandoned posts like these were scattered betwixt districts and streets, only the most pivotal now mandated that marked various hold-points through the sectioned off city that led towards central that required a certain level of clearance. She ignored the disgruntled pedestrians who hid themselves in shadow, the ghettos were not the most welcoming to Soldiers, having not forgotten traded history even if the truth was redacted from public record. The oldest still remembered and even though it was deemed a traitorous offense, it didn’t stop the cycling rumors that Palmecia sought to abolish, but where one rebellious attempt fell, another rose in place.
Elowen carefully moves herself under familiar shadows, the building looming above a decrepit reminder of what it once was with its hallowed out walls and remnants of steel, chipped away and blown to pieces. There was still a pending investigation on the why’s and how, but as she palmed through the dirt and smudges of black, Elowen cared little for the reasoning as she noted fresh boot prints through the refuse. She pressed calloused fingers along the ridges, using the flesh of her palm and length of her gestures to measure each impression, three at least that she could count, no older than a few hours by the soft give-to of mud. There was a strong possibility that it was merely scavengers, but the fine lines she traced over spoke of a unique make, the soles new whereas those in the farthest reaches of this place wouldn’t have been able to simply afford new shoes. Elowen stood and peered off into the distance, following with her eyes as the trail led off into a crevice of blasted stone, chunks of cement and rock left behind, but scrapes of mud marred their soot-blotched surfaces where someone had scaled over them at least once. Which meant they were still there, hidden away in the dark.
She was on the right track at least and nodded once to herself before she moved, following the same path.
I’m coming Alex.
Just hold on.
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