Season 05 - Episode 17

‘cut short replaced’

“Next!” barks Patience.

An ashen faced young woman, barely out of her teens, steps forward from the front of the queue to stand before the bottom step of Pho's mighty throne platform. She wears a long, unadorned, bright white robe that covers her otherwise naked form from neck to ankle, only her bare feet, hands and face protruding.

She is visibly trembling.

Behind her stands a long, single file queue of other young woman dressed just the same. Off to her left stands the ever furious looking Patience, flanked by three enormous Seraphim in addition to the statuesque guards dotted about the throne room.

“Well?” asks Patience, viciously.

“This!” cries the young woman. “Is the story of how a true god came to be! Many years ago, a girl child was born in The Innersides to simple people of no renown. As the girl grew however, she showed herself to be...”

The woman proceeds to tell the story of Pho's life, sweating despite the gooseflesh on her arms and continually licking her lips with a dry, rasping tongue as she focuses with all she has on every word in turn.

Pho sits, high above, resplendent within her incredible robes and hat. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap and she stares ahead into the middle distance. Her plans are proceeding precisely as expected and GovCo is crumbling fast. Within days her dominion will be complete and her victories will stand for eternity as indisputable proof of her divinity.

“The Holy Mother returned to The Innersides,” the quaking young woman is saying now. “At the head of a divine army, raised by her own hand and forged in the heat of battle with foreign infidels.”

As she continues to tell the tale, her breaths gasp in and out of her amongst the carefully controlled sentences. A large pool of blood on the floor beside her has been slowly spreading throughout her recital, oozing towards her, slow but inevitable.

As she speaks, the edge of the red kisses her toes so that she gasps and trembles even more but somehow manages to keep the words coming, blinking her concentration. The blood slips thickly between her toes, under the arches of her feet, cool and sticky, staining her skin, turning her stomach.

“And so it came to pass, as all knew it must and one day would,” she says, gulping hard. “That The Eight were publicly boiled alive for all their many blasphemies and the God Empress herself stood victorious... No! Triumphant! The God Empress herself stood triumphant, triumphant! No! Please, I'm sorry!”

Pho's eyes flick briefly to fix on Patience before returning to the middle distance.

Patience half turns her head to the nearest of the three Seraphim who respond instantly. The three march towards the now openly weeping woman. She makes no effort to flee as two of them seize her and drag her back towards Patience, before twisting her arms so that she is forced to kneel.

With no ceremony or delay, the third Seraphim raises an enormous bladed weapon and then brings it back down. The beginnings of a scream are cut short, replaced only by a fleeting gargle before the young woman's head hits the floor with a heavy sound. Her newly opened neck spouts a brief torrent of blood which leaps to the floor to join the rest.

The two Seraphim heft her body on to the pile of almost identical headless forms while the third with the blade kicks her head to join a second, smaller pile. Satisfied with their work, Patience gives the three another tiny nod so that they resume their positions.

“Next!” barks Patience.

©  a d a m   b y f i e l d , not to be reproduced in any form without written permission