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Subject: [Novel] The Second Matron - Prologue

The tide is turning, brothers! Let us take our kingdom back!

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. It's just that I have no patience, you see.

Kidding aside, I can't wait to see where this story goes.

  • 06.21.2012 2:39 AM PDT

yas334229812

Great read. Have you posted in Halo Waypoint yet.

  • 06.21.2012 10:23 AM PDT

No, actually. I probably will sooner or later though!

Made it past 50 pages! Woohoo.

It was a pain, though, going back and deleting all these extra scenes that I now found a waste of reading time. Oh well. Need to cut more to the plot!

  • 06.21.2012 11:04 PM PDT

Small update. A few pages into chapter 7. I'm trying to shorten chapters now, because mainly it'll progress the story a lot more. As a plus, I won't have to spend an hour reformatting and uploading 20 posts at once!

  • 06.26.2012 6:12 AM PDT

Just finished the funeral scene.

Really interesting. I kinda laughed though when I realized the Elite was wearing human clothing lol.

But seriously, it was interesting to read.

  • 06.29.2012 7:43 AM PDT

Haha, hoped you enjoyed :) it was good to be a bit odd and show mingling cultures.

  • 06.29.2012 9:17 PM PDT

Will be posting up the third chapter ASAP. My writing urge is been rather dead lately, and I'm getting a bit bored of the story, which probably isn't a good sign. Maybe cause I haven't had anything invigorating to read recently. I have a feeling this novel will get a bit repetitive, but you guys will be the judge of that.

  • 07.22.2012 6:40 AM PDT

The tide is turning, brothers! Let us take our kingdom back!

We'll be the judge of that once you post it. :)

  • 07.22.2012 11:09 PM PDT

Oh lord, going through my chapters and butchering off excess material like cutting away fat! Feels incredibly good, yet painful, yet still good. Am I going crazy?

Chapter will be posted in a little bit!

  • 07.23.2012 11:34 PM PDT
Subject: [Novel] The Second Matron - CHAPTER 2 IS UP!

CHAPTER 3:

There was no sound beyond nature's own. A tranquil unity of oriole squawks, rushing waters, calm zephyrs. There were no pollutant coughs of revving engines, no thrums of shimmering grav-fields. There were no voices heard, no clothing rustled. Everyone was silent. Even her pets, crouching dormant in the stables.

He eased backwards, feeling sand grind beneath his feet. He teased them with his spear, shifting it back and forth. He breathed deeply. The air was cold, refreshing.

Something screamed overhead. A wave of heat washed into the courtyard, scattering dirt and tools. A landing vessel. He ignored it.

He readjusted his footing, shuffling backwards. His eyes flicked between the pair. The two opponents gripped blades and bucklers. They converged, slowly, slowly.

He was perfectly still, his form poised and taunt. The opponents tightened, the pincer move locking in.

He altered positions, his footwork coordinating with his arms, his hands synchronised with his spear. A fluent symphony of harmonies that his body executed without thought, without rational thinking, moves inculcated into his muscles and his tendons, motions as integral to him as breathing.

Whsshhh. He maneuvered to the side, stepping past the swinging, pronged, wooden weapon. Another whistling streak of brown and he ducked the stroke before it landed. He pranced back, kicking up sand.

One of them spurred forwards, blade held back, buckler in front. A jab, a feint, and then a thrust sent him staggering backwards. The sangheili spat, and then both of them refocused with a determined glare.

His heart pumped with adrenaline as the stimulants burned his system. He breathed hard. His sweat was a balm to his exertion, filtering the slight winds into a freezing breeze. The opponents spread out to either side, shields in front, blades ready to attack. He let them, willing instinct to become as much of a sense as vision and hearing. He aimed his spear at one opponent, and then flicked his eyes at the other behind. They didn't move.

An oriole cried out in the skies. They closed in.

He threw himself to his left, slamming his spear behind as he went, feeling it tear against wood. The opponent in front slashed forward, the sharpened tips close enough to his flesh he could feel the air being sliced.

He escaped the trap, and then pressed the attack. Left, right, parry, duck he retreated again, and one of them drove forward, and the blade nicked against his forearm. He parried the next stab, and then switched into offense, driving the tip of his spear into the buckler in a muffled thunk of snapping splinters. He yanked the spear free, sending his opponent staggering towards him. He twisted around the shield and hooked him underneath the jaws in a fluid, precise motion, catching him in the throat with the butt. The sangheili dropped.

The next one came, emotion charging his movements. He whirled around the flying blade, and then flurried; neck exposed - hit, and then down to the ribcage, numb the waist, disable the thigh, jar the knee; cut elbow joints if necessary. His opponent lunged, sagging, and he slid to the side, rapping him cleanly across the head with his spear. Dead.

Master Aputho howled.

He grinned, and the gathered crowd cheered. The defeated pair dusted themselves from the sand and bowed. Aputho stepped into the pit and cuffed one across the ear. He turned to the victor.

"A true Helios," Aputho declared. They clasped forearms.

"A fine duel," he replied. He pulled off his tunic, baring his chest to the cold air. Sweat lathered into every groove.

"Still young, brother. The wives must be impressed."

He winked. "Indeed they are."

Aputho shambled closer, his wounded eye twitching. He counted out twenty notes. "There," he said, jamming the money into his pocket. "Next time," he huffed. "You'll be paying me triple."

The other warriors headed out the gate, stacking equipment. Outside the main fort's stacked stone walls, the ocean beat against piers and wharves. Aputho kicked sand from his feet and left the pit. He followed, the cobblestones still grainy and cool. The shadows had not yet fully fled.

He stretched, his contracted muscles loosening. The exercise felt good. He looked up at the sky as he swung his arms. Behind flushed clouds, the three suns began their march to noon.

Aputho headed for a patch of sunslight. He dragged in a footstool and plonked onto the damp wood. "Nirall said tonight will be on him if you won," he said.

The Helios wiped his scalp with the tunic. "He didn't think I'll win, did he?"

Aputho peered up at him, the fluttering eye shut from the sunslight. "No one thought you would've won," he muttered.

"Well. I think you all need to have some faith."

Aputho snorted.

The Helios laughed. "You'll owe me sixty tomorrow. "

"Masters!"

It was one of the men from atop the stone ramparts. "She's returned!" he shouted.

Aputho regarded the parapets irritably. "Who's back, eh?" he called, half-blinded from the sunslight.

The warrior glanced back outwards. "Sharquoi!" he hissed.

Aputho groaned. "Oh, Ancients" He ran his hand down his face. There was a jumble of movement as warriors poured in from the gate, running back for their stations. Aputho swore. He collared the closest sangheili. "How far?" he demanded.

"She's just outside -"

She returned.

She returned, with fire and lightning, her soft footsteps like thunder, her dark eyes burning depths, her braided locks a mass of serpents, her body clad in the impenetrable robe of hierarchy. She returned, in a furious tempest of billowing rage, a terrible avatar of anger, of order, of authority. She returned, to chain them once again beneath crushing words of obedience and submission. She had returned.

She came in through the gate, her servant guard beside. She entered, drawing in the courtyard. The wagons, picks, shovels, gartered boxes, belted crates, metal scraps and exhausted gravity drives. The coiled ropes, wires, wood palings and cut planks. The shafts of timber, chopped pine, trashed welding machinery and used oil tanks. The sheets of grimy aluminum, iron tread plates, tied haystacks, storage bins, waste dumps, rolled fishnets and crustacean cages. The smell of manure, earth, cold stone and dirt, with the faint underlying of the raw ocean. The collective hush of fifty men, silent and guilty. She came in, and ignored it all. She had eyes only for the single individual standing amidst the crowd.

He stood there, his chest naked in the sunslight.

"My dear, dear Qaetha," Alaiya smiled thinly.

--

[Edited on 07.24.2012 12:13 AM PDT]

  • 07.24.2012 12:12 AM PDT

"Could he have been an assassin?"

Alaiya patted her pets. They rumbled happily, brushing their heads against her face. "Doubtful. He was poorly trained, if he was."

Qaetha watched her caress the massive beasts. "It is dangerous, what you have done," he said.

"And what he did was more dangerous," Alaiya snapped. "He was no innocent family member, be assured. It is universally recognised that one does not bring weaponry into delicate matters, or at least one does not draw their weapon unless situations become obviously dire. Apart from the filthy Eayn birds, all other species accept this custom."

Qaetha shrugged. "That is true," he acceded. "Whatever it may be, it is over now."

The men swept away loose straw and excess dirt. The cobbled ground was uncovered like a prehistoric fossil. There was a line leading to the water pipes built into the fort walls. They worked in silence.

There were three peaks on Mount Rol. The tallest was dedicated to the First, and the other two the homes of their respective matrons. While being one collective keep, it was split into three separate forts, all fanning out from the base of the mountain. Fort Secundus was a modest building, constructed into the fabric of the rock, a basic garrison of bricked stone blocks shielded behind a wall. Outside, the paved streets led to the docking harbours, and the rest of the fort's inhabitants.

Secundus was tunneled deep into the granite, a series of warrens that housed the higher families. It was a maze of dwellings, workshops, subterranean passages and windowless chambers. It was mined all the way to the summits, where miradors and watchtowers peeked at the sprawling fields beyond Roliem Keep.

Aputho stepped out from the portal leading into the fort. He shut the aging ironwood door, squinting. Millions of dust motes, gilded in sunslight, swirled around him. He carried a haunch, and held the meat out to Alaiya. He bowed to her and scuttled away.

"You haven't been feeding them," Alaiya observed.

"Yes, I have."

"They are not vegetarians," she reminded, grabbing Avul by one of his teeth. She inspected his jowls like a prize specimen. The drinol glared accusingly at Qaetha, vibrating louder than a throttled vehicle.

Alaiya fed Avul the haunch. It disappeared into his bowels. A whole thigh, enough for weeks, gone as nosh. Tevul sniffed Alaiya's hand for his own meal. The two drinols were eating half their livestock, Qaetha mused. Aputho brought out more chopped meat, strips of fat and blubber.

"If you don't feed Tevul and Avul properly next time you send me traipsing off to human wastes," Alaiya reprimanded. "I'll let them eat you. Grass is not good for their digestion." She moved through the stable. Blind wolves pawed her for food.

"How animals tolerate you is unbelievable," Qaetha confessed.

"There is a lot of practice," she said, staring at him hard.

He grunted.

"Tell me," she said, walking along the stables. "How has my husband been?"

"I have been well."

"Do not play with me, Qaetha," Alaiya warned.

He laughed, leaning on a post. The sweat on his body had dried into a musky odour. "He is drunk as ever," he replied. "I find it strange," Qaetha continued. "How you manage to dominate a hundred lifelong swordsmen, an entire fort's worth of population, humans on the other side of the galaxy and... drinols," he emphasised, poking at Tevul's flank. "Yet you cannot control a fickle little... husband." One of the men behind them cursed as he tipped over a barrel. Rainwater sloshed out.

"There is only so much I can scare a husband with," Alaiya murmured, glancing over at the swearing sangheili. "Unlike swordsmen, who decide to mate with whoever, whenever. You chose me, and I will make you rethink your previous urges."

"I did provide the sons, my dear."

"You did," she conceded.

"Unlike," he pointed out, "Your original husband. How are the boys?"

"Excellent cooks, it seems."

He scowled. The two boys were stringing tack and folding leather sails with the others in the courtyard, and Aputho was hiding piles of rusted pig iron underneath canvas sheets. He had real blood to do that with the matron standing only thirty metres away. Qaetha remembered something. "News from the First, Alaiya," he informed her. "Something about the Criu."

Alaiya perked. "What do the Criu want?"

"Trade, I heard."

"How did you hear? And trade?"

"I stay enlightened," he said.

She kicked at the muddy straw on the ground, revealing a pair of corroded hammers. She flung the tools out of the stable, clattering all too loudly on the cobblestones. "What's this thing about trade?" Alaiya asked.

"That's what I was wondering," he replied, watching two men unbundle hay. He closed his eyes and arched his neck into the lucent sunslight. "I thought the First and Third handled those matters. Why are you trading with our neighbours now?"

"Don't answer me with a question, Helios."

"I apologise," he answered solemnly.

Avul swiveled his eye down to stare a him. Qaetha cracked open an eye. The drinol rumbled. "Vicious, he remarked. Alaiya left the stables, dusting her robes.

"Are you going to the First now?" Qaetha asked, following after her.

"I trust your enlightenment will hit you soon," Alaiya retorted. She entered the fort, letting her vision adapt to the gloom. A shadowy corridor stretched into the mountain. Glass lamps twined from the craggy granite walls. Carved wooden beams supported the ceiling.

"I think I should -" Qaetha started.

She slammed the ironwood door.

--

[Edited on 07.24.2012 12:16 AM PDT]

  • 07.24.2012 12:15 AM PDT
Subject: [Novel] The Second Matron - Prologue

"The Criu are sending in a few traders."

Alaiya studied the First Matron through the holographic screen. Her face was angular, sleek, shaped inflexibly by years of methodical leadership. Her hair was pinned up by a thicket of jade pins and onyx needles.

"When did the Criu start trading?" asked Alaiya. She was in her private chambers; an airy room in the peaks. A ray of light speared in from one small window.

"The Criu have always been trading," the First said drily.

"Their trading methods haven't always been the most conventional," Alaiya replied edgily.

"It's still trading, Second," the First reaffirmed. Her eyes hardened into flint.

Alaiya bowed. "I understand."

"The Criu will enter your fort in a week. They have nineteen members, all merchants. They will be trading cosmetics and accessories. Their tradesmaster has agreed to report to you on the day of arrival and onwards."

"Understood."

"I trust your warriors will keep themselves in check." It wasn't a question.

"I will personally oversee them," Alaiya confirmed.

"You shouldn't need to. They should know their roles."

"They will," Alaiya assured.

The First's servant guard slithered in the screen's background. The mgalekgolo was an orange hulk of wriggling roots. It swelled inside its armour plating. "I have sanctioned their stay and their allowances. The Criu will know what to do, and all details will be made clear to you as soon as they arrive," the First said.

Alaiya asked, "Why are they trading in my -"

"They are trading in your fort because mine has enough mingling families," she cut. "In the chance you do become First, I expect you to know what to do. The Third is incompetent, and I am planning her replacement. I do not trust her with the trials of the First, and she has had her time."

She might as well as have ordered the Third killed. Matronage was a lifelong position. You remained until death. "Of course."

The First steepled her hands. "The Criu are not the most respected of families, we know. They have their uses, but Roliem can do without the attention of catering to them, however pedestrian trading may seem. Word can go around, but I do not want Roliem to be the heart of gossip. Vadam can take that spot."

"That could be an affront to the Criu," Alaiya cautioned.

"That is foreseeable, but not a major concern. It is not a directed insult in the first place, so if the Criu matrons do take offense it will pass off as a genuine oversight," the First said, "I don't want utter secrecy, just a hushed voice. Crui's matrons have taken their share of disrespect, and they do not mind, not fully."

Alaiya knew the Criu matrons. Dark, eccentric, perpetually shrouded the clandestine robe of deceit. The Criu were a lineage of assassins for hire. They had garnered the reputation of turncoats; what they did, and who their allegiances stood with, depended on which side offered more of the life-sustaining fuel; money. Few families would stoop down to barter with the Criu, but they will seldom short of offers; the assassins' contract is one even they will not break.

There was one thing, one sacrifice required for an assassination to be carried out. When the contract is sanctioned, the employing family must officially sign the contract, with an original sigil. The Criu themselves would forever remain neutral.

"Have they begun their trade routes anywhere else?" Alaiya asked.

The First shook her head. Her mandibles were exquisitely formed, Alaiya realised with a pang of suppressed jealousy. The First had the visage of sculpted perfection, and the only mar were the tolls of leadership, hardening the soft clay into an aging ceramic. "We are one of the Criu's associates that extend past business," she said. "Movam is the only other. Aside from assassinations, no other family would deign to go near them."

"Of course,"

"How was the trip with the humans?"

Alaiya shrugged. "One of them brought a weapon aboard Preeminent."

The First's eyes glinted. "And how did you solve that?"

"Appropriately," Alaiya said.

Her mandibles creased into a smile. "Very well. But Secundus, the cycle is nearing when the decision must be made. See to it that you have made your choice, for it could tip the final result."

"I understand."

"Good. The Criu should be at your walls within the week. I want Fort Secundus back to normal by tomorrow."

"As you say, First Matron," concluded Alaiya. She bowed again to the matron, and then the holographic screen winked out.

The projector protruding from the raw granite walls faded into deactivation. Huraii had left a goblet of chilled tea on the tables, along with a fresh change of clothing. Alaiya unbuttoned her hanfu.

"So I was right."

Qaetha swaggered into the chamber. Alaiya scowled. "So I was right," he repeated, sitting down onto the bed. He watched her undress. "The Criu are coming."

"To trade," Alaiya clarified. "And that is all."

"I was right about that too. But are you sure?"

"There is nothing wrong with the Criu, whatever you might think." She sipped from the goblet, naked, and then began to pull on the new robe.

"There is aplenty wrong with the Criu, Alaiya," he said. "Respect might be given, but it will be as false as oil on water. Our men will not leave them alone, you know."

"These are merchants, Qaetha. Not assassins." She clasped the robe together, and then headed for the doorway. "Your men better not touch the Criu. This is the last time I will say it."

Qaetha jumped to his feet, following hotly. "The Criu -"

She slammed the door again.

  • 07.24.2012 12:18 AM PDT

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