“Keel, cut comms,” Keya said. I frowned in confusion but then Keya’s voice returned, “Pickup is cancelled, cadet. I was told to cut all comms so that everyone thinks it’s a malfunction of the helmet rather than a deliberate plan to eradicate an obstacle, but I’m a soldier. I don’t baulk from my kills, don’t need to perform mental gymnastics to justify my actions. It’s about duty and the benefit of the greater good, sure, but it’s also about killing what I’m told to kill. I will observe your passing unflinching. We strike without warning, cadet.”
A sob bubbled in my throat. Things went so quiet when Bhechro stopped harassing me. I’d expected the professors to fail me on units for spurious reasons, another poisoning attempt or arming a homicidal student who was desperate to climb the social ladder, but not this. You fucking idiot; I cursed myself; you backed right up to Keel’s hard cock and took it like a champ, without even needing to be stupefied into submission like the poor queen. Miazydar! They’ve drugged you and they’re not going to pick me up. I’m going to die in a matter of seconds if you don’t get here!
This is rape, I know it, the hard kernel of truth sitting in the depths of my stomach like a stone as I enter the queen. My neck tries to wind with hers as I pump into her, my hips moving on automatic as hers lay beneath mine, still and yielding. Something prickled at my consciousness, fighting to get through the haze, but it was all I could do to hold on to what I am as I desecrated this poor dragon’s body. She stunk of chemicals, reeked of the attempts to prompt her into receptivity and then into submission when that didn’t work. This wouldn’t result in any young, that I knew, and then it occurred to me: Why were they going to all this trouble to complete this travesty?
Miazydar... My mental link came out more of a sob than anything. I didn’t cry, there was no point. They’d trained and trained me to push past the fear, past my good and natural instincts and now the cold, rational part of my brain had the wheel and wasn’t letting go. Miazydar’d been drugged into oblivion, as he was the only one who could’ve stopped this. They’d gotten me good and proper. I zipped by dragons and props, heard the crowd’s roar grow louder and louder as they watched me fall, on tenterhooks to see if I’m going to make it or not. I wasn’t, I knew that now. I thought I was smart enough to see past all the games, but I wasn’t. Flea and Jez would be stuck here at best or killed. Probably killed, because if they’re willing to commit this crime against a rider, what would a couple of menials mean to the Aravisians? And Scalla, they must know exactly what role she had to play and were about to take her out. And they had to sit and watch this, no doubt with plasma spears at their necks, they had to watch me die.
Finally, my brain ran out of things to consider and a quiet peace settled over me. I wasn’t going to sob or plead or do anything to titillate Keya. She wanted to bear witness, well she would get nothing from me but my battered body. I could see the riders, the sand, the faces of the crowd as I grew closer and closer. Finally, I shut my eyes, not wanting to wait for the moment of impact. I was finished.
I couldn’t describe for you what it was like to fall to your death. Suffice it to say it was agonising. Feeling the machinery of your body crumple like the front end of a car, organs, bones, muscles tearing and shattering. I was conscious for part of it, trapped within the cage of my corpse until finally the synapses stopped firing.
38
“Well, you always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
My eyes flicked open. This is unexpected, I thought. Of all the models of the afterlife, I wouldn’t’ve thought the white room from The Matrix was the correct one. Because all I could see around me was whiteness and at my mental prompt, two red leather upholstered wing chairs popped into being. One being for me of course and the other? My Nan sat in it wearing a floral blouse and a stretchy pair of sage green pants. My heart stuttered...where? I didn’t have a heart anymore to beat.
“Nan...?” my voice was part prayer, part plea.
“Of course, you summoned me. Finally got desperate enough on those adventures you persist on going on to tap me on the shoulder? It’s been murder hanging around in the background, watching you go through all of this, but here I am.”
“How...? What...?”
She smiled and reached out for me, taking my hand when I sat down and patting it. “You’re a magic user, my love, an incredibly powerful one. Like your dear old Nan, like Merlin. It was very difficult when you were young. Your father refused to deal with the situation and your mother had kittens when I broached the idea. I had to put a seal on your magic until I had a chance to talk to you about it, waiting for you to be ready to handle that kind of burden. I thought we had some time, when you turned thirty was my estimation. Of course, I died, didn’t I, leaving you with access to all your powers at once and no training. I could’ve sworn I had a few more decades left, but I guess death is the final adventure for all of us.”
“Wow.” An eloquent response, I knew but I couldn’t think of anything else to add. The info dump sat on me like a brick. “You’re being awfully forthcoming. Why weren’t you like this when you were alive? Why didn’t you at least hint? You know how obsessed I was with magic.”
“I am because that’s the way you’ve made me. Your real grandmother has passed on, how and in what form, I’m not sure. I’m her echo and you want me to cut the bullshit and lay it all on you, so I am.”
“Really? So here I can just want something and it happens?”
Her smile was wide, the same apple-cheeked, sweet one I remembered. “Honey, you want things and they happen all the time. You always have.”
I jerked back. “Um... no. I didn’t want that fucking psycho to try and rape Ash.”
“No, because that’s not how it worked. You wanted adventure, romance, challenges you could overcome and emerge triumphant from. Of course, there was a little oversight on your part. You’d think from your endless reading of those fantasy books you’d have realised that the main characters often go through horrible things before the triumphant point. In that particular case, it was Ash.”
“This is bullshit. If I wanted adventures, why did all the cool shit happen to Ash? I wanted to make out with Elaith Windrunner so bad and she was all like ‘Ew, he has tinsel, coloured hair’.”
“The ‘cool shit’ you describe happened to Ash first because she was the only one you could visualise doing so.” My grandmother’s apparition gave me a sad smile. “You always did let her surge forward, dominate the conversations, get all the attention. When you came into your power, it had to go somewhere, so it went to the person you unconsciously thought of being the most heroic.”
“Oh.”
“And now we need to get back to yours. You’re equally the leader your sister is, sometimes more so, something I’ll have you not repeat to her. You watch what goes on with everyone, proceeding carefully and you think this a weakness. But anyway, sibling rivalry aside, we need to get you out of this mess you’re in.”
“Deus Ex Granny?” I said.
“Not me, you. You have the power, Tess, to do whatever you wish. That’s how it works, you frame what you want in your mind and then push that out.”
“What? I’m asking the universe and it will just do my bidding?”
“In your case, yes. In everyone else’s case, it’s just a bunch of fatalistic twaddle where they refashion a whole constellation into some kind of paternalistic force.”
“So I could turn the Queen of Aravisia into a pile of gummy bears and make all the dragons ride the humans?”
“Let's see, shall we?”
We snapped back into being in the arena, surrounded by chaos. As Keya had predicted, some of the crowd bayed for more blood, wanting more riders to jump to experience the dubious pleasure of waiting on tenterhooks if they would live or die. Others recoiled in horror, hiding their eyes behind their hands and thankfully turning their children away. Riders and dragons clustered on the ground around the bloody smear that was me. “Let’s fix that first, yes?” Nan said and then all of a sudden I was opening my eyes and peeling my now perfectly healed body off the sand. Everyone scrabbled back, their expressions comical as I got to my feet. All except for Keya, her face looked like death.