“’What shall the herons eat, my lord?’ Obar asked quietly, as the beast of clay and mud took shape.
Obar 3:9-10, Book of Dreams.
‘Legions.’ Replied Ohn.”
…
The Sun crawled into the horizon, its golden glow skimming through the sky, well before the distant halo peaked above the walls of the valley, and greeted its peoples. The shadows of the night, where the greatest tests of Ohn Himself resided, retreated once more into their vast mountain homes, slumbering until the great eye shut once more.
Maahijan sighed, an ache in her chest that only the destitute and the wise could understand. It wasn’t an unpleasant gesture, allowing the air to escape her ailing, tar-filled lungs, but across the gravels that entrenched her throat, every breath became a wheeze. She really should’ve quit smoking at an age when such changes were possible.
Not that I would’ve, she acknowledged, and if it weren’t for the company of her servant several paces back, she may have broken composure and laughed at herself. Instead, she humoured the end of her still blazing pipe – it was beautifully crafted from Signan Mahogany, raided centuries ago from a trading ship that had dared to miss a declaration of war between their two nations, and been pilfered for its trouble. Old Signa… it had been so long since she’d been.The thought caused a nostalgic lament to huff in her mind; she may never get a chance to see it again.
“Why smoke from a pipe so old, when it could be in a museum, hmm?” Maahijan frightfully hissed towards her servant. Rema was a younger man, far too used to her ageing voice to be bothered by its rasp, and far too used to her ageing temperament to be bothered by her words.
“I would not question your refined taste, Your Majesty,” the boy returned, a familiar but polite smirk on his face. It had taken her entire life to find a servant who could actually smile in her presence. Maybe it was the changing times and waning opinions of her royal house, but it served well to have someone who would call her on her bullshit when the dementia finally caught up with her. It had taken her mother, and her mother’s mother, and Maahijan highly doubted her generation was the one that the great, unknowable beast had skipped.
“Pah,” she spat in all but moisture, “There is no refinement here, my boy. If I weren’t beholden to so many strings, I would crack open the imperial treasury myself and start handing out these trinkets to every beggar and thirst-ridden on the street. They sat collecting dust, endlessly polished just to collect dust again. No matter how fine their craft, why have them if they aren’t to be used?”
“If I may speak plainly, I would assume it is a matter of image, Your Majesty,” Rema explained, a hint of hesitance in his voice. “You are the Empress of the finest empire the world has ever seen. If you were to live in squalor-”
“Would giving away everything I own reduce me to naught?” Maahijan pondered aloud, turning around to face the boy before looking out across her great capital, perched atop the world on her Palace’s balcony.
“It’d certainly make the court question your… esteem, Your Majesty,” Rema finally put it. Oh, that was it. Always the court and their machinations. The Court this and the Court that. The Court and its stresses were what put her father in an early grave, and she could feel it starting to grasp her ankles too.
“I hate it when you say things that are entirely true,” Maahijan coughed, tapping out the ends of what remained in her pipe crucible, before a wearier smile curved up her lips. “Your candidness is… greatly appreciated, Rema, as always.”
She rested the pipe across its specialised holder which, after being scrubbed clean by the archiving team, would return to the Grand Imperial Collection, likely never to see the light of day again. It held little socio-cultural or scientific interest nowadays – at least compared to all the other items traded and robbed from the Signans during their mutual heydays.
“Would you like your morning tea, Your Majesty?” Rema nodded like she’d already made the choice.
“Yes, if you would. Black-”
“With two sugars?” Rema cut in, though she hardly minded. Despite the many, many problems she had with her weary mind and wearier bones, Maahijan appreciated having others to remember things for her now. Without even needing a nod, the servant came to collect the pipe, shutting the security case tight around it.
Trained, rhythmic steps brushed the lavish flooring as he moved away, and Maahijan absently played with the hay-like tips of her black-and-grey hair. Lifting some of the frayed ends to the sun, she studied the rays that flickered through and cast infrequent shade across her cheeks. The light had grown as soon as its maker peaked across the far-off mountains, and now the entire balcony laid ablaze in soft orange.
The doors behind her swung open, and Rema flinched at whatever he saw, visible enough that her mother would chastise his conduct. Maahijan’s memory, as faulty as it was, remained unfond of her dear old mother, and as such, her first thoughts were of concern. These last days were vital – the die had been cast a final time, and she needed Ohn’s fortune with her. The boy almost quaked in his soft clothes before the open doors, forcing Maahijan to turn. When she saw what stood on the precipice, covered in gilded white by the morning sun, she let out a sigh of relief.
“Uhm, y-Your Majesty?” Rema called out, before the figure, ignoring him, ducked under the shorter doors with a mechanical whine. The floors ached with each step, as the hulking, four metre Frame stomped forth, ruining the freshly laid carpet. Typical, she tutted, as the metal behemoth came to a halt just a handful of paces away.
“Make that two teas, Rema,” the Empress observed, a hollow smile across her face as she rested back into her seat. The boy gulped down his abject terror, his practice etiquette markedly shaken as he nodded, and pulled the doors close behind him, leaving his Empress to face the monstrous machine alone.
Maahijan rested back into her cushions, wishing she still had her pipe to chew on. She further wished for the freedom to fidget with her hands; fiddle with her hair, perhaps scratch the slight itch on her brow, but she had an image to maintain, and for once that fact was of actual concern.
“Good morning and well met, Salakh,” Maahijan spoke at last. “He is a dutiful servant, that boy,” she flicked her eyes in gesture to the closed door. “Though, I will remind you that it is custom to alight in any royal chambers, save for important ceremony.” As expected, the Frame did not move to disembark. “You are welcome to sit.”
The machine stayed in place, silent other than a sinister whir radiating from its core – Maahijan wouldn’t be surprised if smoke leaked from its ears. Many Frames had stood before her in life; she’d overseen her Grandmother’s greatest legacy for most of its existence, after all, but no Frame – whether foreign or native, whether friend or foe – could compare to the deliberate terror of her El-Mutelab; The Nightmares of Ohn’s greatest discretion.
And nightmarish they were. Whilst other Frames matched the colours of dusted dunes, a Nightmare, like its namesake, haunted the night. As such, dark blues and blacks covered the machine in splotches, adorned with tearing spikes that, to the unaware observer, appeared only as a warning sign; ‘stay away from me, or perish’, each harrowing spine seemed to promise. Maahijan knew enough about the great machines to understand that there was no room for decorum upon the dreamers of her lands, blessing from Ohn Himself notwithstanding. But for an El-Mutelab, those who had survived Ohn’s greatest of tests, no blessing was necessary – the very fact they had survived was blessing enough.
Salakh was not the man’s name. The Empress could easily dig for that truth – he would never respond to it. Salakh was a title bestowed upon the steel around him – the man who piloted it held little consequence – at least, in theory. This particular pilot had been in the saddle for longer than her dearest Son could talk; in essence, the man and the machine were one in the same. As she looked up and down the daunting, alien visage, Maahijan felt a simple fondness, like a mother seeing a long-distant child. Frames had always fascinated her, and Salakh’s longevity had proven particularly intriguing.
Recognising the lack of response to her pleasantries, she continued. “How are preparations at the front?”
“I have come to deliver a message,” the voice boomed. If they were not so familiar, Maahjian may have jumped in her seat. Or, perhaps she was just too old to be scared by the buzzing, crackling voice of a Frame. Not that she, with her own aged growl, had much room to judge.
“A message, hm? And the reason a courier could not bring this to me…?”
“It is a message that only you and I are privy to know,” Salakh stated, leaving no room for pleasantries. “It is in regards to your son.”
Ah, of course. Her son and her heir, Prince Seith – loved by her people, even those who hated her reign. Seith was incredibly easy to love, after all; for decades after her ascendency to the throne, through turmoil and strife, Maahijan had never thought to bear an heir. Men and women had caught her eye, of course, but in a world of dying empires, none had caught the rest of her. Having children could not have been further from her mind, until she reached well into her fifties, and she had been told it was too late – that she had waived too long. ‘Cowards and fools!’, she had cried all those years ago; ‘I don’t care if it’s impossible – I wish to try regardless.’
Maahijan had wanted to be a mother once before that, long ago. But when her father died young, and her ascendency to the head of her house crashed in like an early basin flood, her priorities were forced to shift. And with the Zhugónese State staring down their eastern flanks with predatory eyes, and the upstart Federation readying to take their holdings around the Vale Sea that divided them, her time was never spent in peace long enough to think about children, right until it had become most difficult.
So she tried, despite the advice of her forebears, and through what many would call a miracle, she grabbed a chance at motherhood that few had ever believed. Unbeknownst to her people were the tens of rounds of IVF that went into that ordeal, the constant loathsome failure turning pain to numbness as it went on. And, then, when the treatment finally worked, when her little pocket of light finally shone into the world, she had grown too distant. If there remained one thing she would ever dare regret, it was the time she’d lost with her son.
“He is dead, ma’am,” the machine’s voice, so far from human, finally announced.
After everything, all twenty-two years of his life that she’d loved from afar and lost from even further, all Maahijan could do was breathe out a sigh. She knew it had been coming, for far too long, but what hurt the most was that she couldn’t feel a thing. She wanted to scream for her boy, her darling boy, but all she could do was rest back in her seat, unsure if she even felt defeat.
“What happened?” Her words were slow and hushed.
“Official intelligence states a Raelithan assassination, my lady. Assumed as a response to our backing out of the Dune Peace.”
She made a knowing sound. “I said ‘what happened?’, not why.”
Salakh didn’t answer for a long moment, his mind so close to metal that she pictured the sparks jumping inside. Finally, a grating rasp preceded a curt explanation.
“He died in his hotel room. He was found by morning staff several days ago. Guard command was notified immediately, before the information surrounding his passing was disseminated amongst the rest of Armed Forces Command.”
“And officially…”
“He is alive, albeit with a strong illness preventing him from partaking in his ambassadorial duties. Command has established an information quarantine. The collapse of the Dune Peace was of convenient timing.”
“Hm,” her eyes traced the mountains on the horizon. “And I was not made aware of this, because…?”
“Armed Forces Command believed it would negatively affect your duties to the Empire, Ma’am,” he stated without so much as a shake in the metal carapace. In fact, since entering, his Frame had become entirely still.
“My duties, of course, outweigh the death of my only son.”
Maahijan wished she had the strength to place more anger in her words. She deserved to be angry – furious, even. Instead, she mirrored the motionlessness of Salakh, resting her hands in her lap.
“Did they make it swift, at least?” She asked with finality, eyes glazed, hovering over the stacks upon stacks of buildings that extended from their central spire.
“I ensured it, as you requested, ma’am.”
A sigh slipped from her nose. The one thing Salakh would never do was lie. In that very moment, she would’ve appreciated a half-truth, or a white lie to soften the blow, but this would suffice.
“‘There is no greater reason for revenge than the tainting of one’s blood’. My father used to say that. Asshole…” she spat, wishing again that she still had her pipe. “And the invasion of the Free States begins in…?”
“A month. At most. More likely in the week following the announcement of his passing,” Salakh marched his way through the conversation, glass eyes firmly locked away, like he wasn’t even present. “First Bakra; once that has fallen, the base of Federal defence in the region will be paralysed. Then, without Federation support, Adrabad and Farodine will fall in the weeks after. Finally, we will encircle El-Alliepa, and force the Raelithans out – by hand, if necessary.”
“Oh, don’t get too excited for me now,” Maahijan hummed with the same monotone, her hands lifting with her point.
“There is nothing to be excited for, ma’am.”
“And why’s that?”
“War is no game.” The hollow, buzzing statement festered in the empty chamber.
“Uhm,Your Majesty, the uh…” Rema stammered as he crept through the doors, glancing at the monolith who paid him no mind. “The tea you asked for, Your Majesty.”
“Excellent, Rema.” Maahijan kept her eye on Salakh as the servant bobbed past, the teacups rattling like a soft rain on their dishes as he hastily placed it down. With an intense stare, she looked up to the young boy, and tilted her head in the direction of the door. “Thank you. You are dismissed.”
Usually, she would permit a certain amount of negotiation between herself and her closest staff; she wanted people who would talk back to her – who would have a back bone when she needed them to. In that moment, however, she grasped the reins tight, a single look telling the young servant that any backtalk would earn harsh punishment. The boy nodded after a moment of hesitation, turning on his heels, skimming his eye up and down the mechanical horror at the edge of his vision, and hurrying away.
“Is there anything else I need to know, Salakh?” Maahijan rasped, her voice caught in her throat at an inopportune moment.
Silence befell them, but it was a musing silence – the pilot of the steel beast, a man of few words, carefully planned every encounter like the commander on a battlefield. He must have realised by now that any plan, whether for conversation or combat, collapsed upon confrontation?
“There was an explosion, ma’am.” Finally the machine chittered.
“How… nondescript. Where?”
“Mount Killian Base, centre of the Raelithan’s Frame research-”
“And the Frame Infantry,” Maahijan nodded, restraining herself from playing with her creviced fingers as if the pipe still lingered between them.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Was it one of ours?”
“No, ma’am.” Salakh read from a practised script.
“Cut to the chase, Salakh. Who died, and does it particularly matter to us or our nearing conflict?”
“We do not know the full scope of the situation, ma’am. The Raelithans have been hesitant to reveal details about the event.”
“Figures…” she turned back towards the horizon. The sun pushed above the last tips of the distant mountains.
“However, a full list of the dead has been published. At least one Marshal died in the blast, or the ensuing chaos.”
“It’s terrible luck to wish well upon someone’s death,” Maahijan glanced at the teacup, resting untouched on its dish. “But I won’t deny how conveniently timed that is… Almost too convenient.” The Empress hummed into the aged webbing of her hand, allowing herself this minor indulgence as it maintained a regal appearance of wisdom.
“You suspect foul play.” Salakh noted. He hadn’t moved an inch since arriving.
“No. Divine.” The Empress returned, glanced up at the machine.
“The difference being?” And for the first time, the machine glanced back. There was a second of pause, as the soulless slits glared down towards her ageing eyes, in an unflinching contest that neither would win. Maahijan squinted, the figure jutting in and out of focus. Trust a monster? Who would do something so brave.
Then, the Empress chuckled, a rare sound in her holiest of houses, hoarse and rough as it rang from her throat. “Because one is blasphemy, and the other is not,” she explained, knowing full well the man behind the mechanical eyes already knew that truth. “The question is… is this the doing of the First Dreamer Himself? Or another spirit so divine?”
“That is blasphemy also.” Salakh noted.
“To compare Ohn’s power to anything else? Why, yes it is.” Maahijan smirked into her cup, taking a polite sip from the rim. Rema could make a damn fine tea; that day, however, he had missed the mark. It tasted much better, and far worse, than usual.
“Your update was greatly appreciated, Salakh.” Maahijan returned to business, her tone dragging along behind her. “You’re dismissed.”
The machine did not bow its head, did not shift anymore than it deemed necessary. It performed a short salute without ceremony, before skulking back towards the door, and looming back into the dark.
“And Commander?” Maahijan called across the balcony.
The mass halted, not turning over in its dark shroud to face her again.
“Show no mercy to those who killed my son.” She thought it best to maintain the illusion of wrathful vengeance; perhaps if she kept the lie on her tongue, it might seep into her ageing mind.
The sunlight plastered itself upon her balcony, and for a second more on this day of polarising news, she allowed her mind to ease, to absorb the warmth into her ageing skin, before it would all be sundered. Another morning lost to her Imperial duties. But before she was even to become the Empress once again, to face her people in the hundreds of affairs that packed her day, she first finished her tea in the morning light, before following a traced path she had walked along a thousand times.
Through the doors, away from her one private safety, down two flights of stairs glowing with golden sunlight, past the deep blues and emerald greens of the interior façades that her father had spent so long perfecting. Down another flight of stairs seeped in deep tea and the buzzing of electric candlelight, and towards a set of golden doors that, so far down in her palace complex, stood defiantly ostentatious amongst more subtle decor.
Despite the unbelievable sight, they did, of course, exist – though not on any official record. Only Maahijan, and a select few of her staff were informed of its presence, and fewer still its location. Even if one revealed the hidden, golden arch buried deep in the sub basement of her grand palace, no one could ever say what it led to. The people who had built this path downwards were all dead; and they had never been privy to what lay at the bottom.
An orderly stood in wait, her one and only purpose to stay put by the doors, forever ready for her Empress’ arrival. “Madhya,” the Empress nodded as she passed, the doors sliding in step with her walk. They had been tuned as her gait had slowed with her age, so the gleaming jaws would open exactly as she approached, ready to close moments after she had stood astride on the other side..
A channel of darkness, crawling down into the black, lay out before her. Buzzing lights came alive with her steps; a distinct set of sounds that she had been familiar with for longer than her son had been alive, and for far longer than he’d been dead. A shock of pain flushed across her chest – at her age, a common occurrence. But in her situation, a mother having lost her son, she knew that heartache was worse than it had ever been, and could ever be. Maahijan could keel over from a heart attack the next day, and it would not hurt as much as a single breath would hurt her then. Even so, she huffed, her composure struggling against the dunes as it rose and fell and rose again.
The final landing came into view, illuminated by soft blue lights that spread a dull reflection on a second towering set of golden doors. The old regent breathed in, and then out, raising herself back to her full height – which wasn’t much higher at all. She placed her hands behind her back, and glanced down, wishing memories of her boy’s youngest years would be carried away in the embers. Maahijan broke the clasp of her hands, wiping away at her eye with her left, before returning to the same position just as the old machine came to rest. There was no time to ruin her ceremonial garb this morning.
The doors opened, greeting her with the ever present moisture of the deepest level of her palace. The air could never be freed from the clasp of the damp – a problem her ancestors had solved by plating every important step, every rail to guide future holy men and women, and even the mechanisms themselves, in sheets of opulent gold. Maahijan had tutted too many times at the sheer audacity of it; was there not another metal, equally unreactive and significantly less gaudy, that they could’ve chosen?
Oh, but she couldn’t tear it all out now. It was tradition, her father had once told her so at the end of his life. The man had grown frail from years of torment and worry – political posturing had never been his strong suit, and yet the stuff had marked the entire last quarter of his life, dragging him down the path of the same heart problems she likely now suffered. So young he had died, and younger still had she ascended.
Maahijan removed her indoor shoes, flexing her toes as she stepped against the uncomfortable, warm boulders that lead further down the chamber. Anything not covered in gold or silver plating was natural rock; calcium pillars extending down from the tall ceiling, covered in slow growing mosses and darkness-loving lichens. If only her ancestors had paid more attention to these beautiful features – the things Ohn gave, instead of what humans had made in a false attempt at living up to His image. Following the path, as she had done every day for the better part of a century, she counted the steps with a silent rhyme she had made as a young girl.
The steps folded out, leading to a shallow pool, glowing in swirling blue and green luminescents. Motes of light swam across the surface, and a deep, untraceable glow came from deep below, in a place no man – or Imperial monarch – could ever reach. Lifting the tips of her ceremonial garb, kept the same length for the inevitable time that someone younger and taller than herself was permitted down into these holiest of chambers, she waded into the cool waters. Anything to fight the oppressive moisture in the air was appreciated.
Maahijan sighed out, allowing her ever ageing bones to rest against the rocks on the water’s edge, and reciting the lines she had memorised from birth.
“O Graceful Ohn, we beg for pardon,
When granted futures unseen.
O Learned Ohn, Reveal thy Garden
Within the waking dream.
O Mighty Ohn, I give to thee,
within and without; my light.
O Brightest Ohn, I beg from thee,
Please lend us thy sight.”
It stayed quiet, for a moment. Maahijan had always found being in the presence of this most sacred pool put her at ease. When her father died, she had sobbed and sobbed for days, neglecting to maintain her sacred duties during that time. “The God-Dream”, they called it – the first vision mighty Ohn ever lent a reigning monarch. Some claimed that in missing these essential prophetic dreams she in her week-long absence directly led to the Free States Rebellion, and the stagnation her great empire now faced. Fools, they all were – she needed no prediction to tell her that would happen, sooner or later. And more so, they had never seen what she had been shown the first time she had descended.
The water glowed brighter. “So begins the light show,” she smirked under her breath. Beams swirled and sparked beneath the gently roaming waters. Still as they had been just before her arrival, the ripples that came from her aching movements hit every corner of the pool, bouncing and bounding around as the waves and waters grew stronger. Droplets shook free from the stalactites above, and crashed against the stormy whirlpool forming just off the rocky coast where she sat, unbothered. And came forth the light, shining in a golden pillar that reflected through the thin glimmering sheet that covered the watery pool. It rose and rose, before finally reaching the holiest of symbols, carved upon the roof of the cave – a circle, intersected by a single line. Ohn’s holy eye, as He watched over the waking world.
The lights crashed against the roof, and Maahijan tilted her neck back, looking upon the sacred spot with slowly adjusting eyes. Her spine creaked with the effort, but only one chance would be granted to her to see this machination – such was the ephemerality of Ohn’s gift.
Along the roof, an image formed, flashing in a hundred swirling colours in a whirlwind of shifting, iridescent dunes. The forms shifted and flashed, before settling on a single projection – a round orb, rotating in place in striking yellow and orange. Beams extended from it, engulfing the rest of the palette the vision covered. Inside the sphere, two wings grew from a single point – no, a single figure, sprouting from their back. The figure fluttered unnaturally in place, like a hastily crafted marionette.
The silhouette soared in place, wisping winds passing by its wings, before the feathery forms tore asunder. The lights cut from below, a growing shadow catching the edges of the projection and engulfing the silhouette back into the darkness of the pool, until only a pinprick remained in light. It expanded again, following the lines of Ohn’s most holy symbol, until the carved rock glowed in his holy light.
Then the symbol was carved in three, hastily across its side. The lines burned and dissipated, and then… it was gone.
Maahijan blinked, looking up towards the last embers of the vision, before glancing down at the pool, the light retreating to the deep below. Questions crossed her mind – even though one was never meant to question the dreams. But one most important thought held on her tongue.
“A winged girl reaches for the sun, and a God is felled…” Maahijan whispered to the cave. “But if we were to shatter her wings first, the heathen will fall?”
The echoes provided no answer.
Edited by Jennifer C.
Frameshift 