Anna Drimoxi sprints out from the cave, resetting the control crystal as she goes and scooping the andantesite shard sitting in the mouth of the cave. The monstrous pillar of sand jetted into the air by unnatural gravity begins to fall and blow apart in the wind. Once the ground beneath her feet transitions from damp rock to hot sand, she makes a break for it, rushing toward the edge of the sand cloud running as her mother’s necklace bangs against her neck and the sharp edges of the control apparatus grind into her palm.
She’s almost made it when the shots ring out. Ring would perhaps be the wrong word, as something ringing has some sort of harmony to it, some sort of tone. These do not. They sound like miniature explosions, white hot balls of fury and pain, sharp thundercracks of impending death.
Almost on instinct, she whirls around, wondering if the rest are still following her, or already gone, their cold flesh digging into the dry, dead sand. The protecting mist of sand is already gone by now, diminished to a yellow haze through which misty figures can be seen. One is slumped at the ground behind her, and the other is her grandfather, Samael Drimoxi, running, arms at his side, towards her granddaughter - running, running, as if from a demon of old, running up until the time a small, red hole opens up in the side of his torso and a splatter of blood heralds his fall to the ground.
Anna screams, a primal, animalistic scream that shakes her world and that she herself is not fully aware of. She runs back to Sam and kneels down by his side, desperately trying to staunch the sickeningly warm flow of blood from his chest until he chokes out “It’s no use, Anna”.
“NO!” she shouts, even though all her knowledge of medical science tells her otherwise - tells her that the bullet has already passed through, ripping through the liver and splitting open the stomach to expose her grandfather’s insides to the ravishes of hydrochloric acid. Knows that the gush of blood and the bullet lying in the sand next to her grandfather mean that it is already too late, too late, too late…
“Anna,” Sam chokes, groaning after every word, “Anna, I’m sorry about what I said yesterday. I didn’t want those to be my last words before I -”
“You’re not going to, grandpa, you’re not going to-” Anna repeats, whispering into his ear until she cannot even force herself to believe it, until her world comes crashing down beside her feet and she breaks down, crying, salty tears mingling with the sea breeze as they fall down, down down. Sam says, “So I wanted you to have this.” With a momentous effort, like a cripple learning to walk for the first time, he takes a folded stack of papers out from his jacket and drops it, like a dead thing, onto the sand. Anna picks it up. It’s a picture of Sam, along with her mother and his daughter, along with a handwritten note, the contents of which will haunt her for years to come:
I killed her, Anna.
I killed your mother. Not intentionally, but it was me that did it, all the same.
They said she died of thyroid cancer. They pinned it on a lithium leak down the road, but I knew better.
It was when she was your age, and I was beginning my experiments on the green jewel of our legacy. I had only a flawed crystal of Andantesite at the moment, and was repeatedly powering it up in an effort to divine its properties.
What I did not know was that flawed Andantesite releases dangerous and sickening radiation, a spray of gamma rays that jetted out from the cracks in my enthralling green crystal, jetting through carpet and wood, up to where my daughter slept, until a small batch of her cells took in the poison, waiting and conspiring for thirty years until…
I’ll never forgive myself for what I’ve done, Anna. It’s why I’ve taken you in. I couldn’t leave you with no mother and an aloof father. It’s why I’ve shown you the door to the Resistance.
I’d like to say that it was the right thing to do. That many lives are going to be more important than one. But the truth is, Annabelle Drimoxi…
I don’t really know.
Her reading of the note is cut abruptly short by the Republic trooper that stands above her, one gruff hand around her collar. “I’ll take that,” he says.
Without even thinking - without even feeling anything except blinding, hot rage at the man that would take away her grandfather’s final legacy - she thrusts her blade into his stomach.
The four-foot length of steel is designed for this job, and the weaker flesh gives way easily. The trooper’s eyes go wide with surprise and then fill with pain.
Anna Drimoxi twists the knife.
The trooper groans before gargling as a few drops of vomit come to his mouth - then he falls, first to his knees and then flat on his face, nose stuck in the pool of Sam Drimoxi’s blood.
Anna runs, runs from the soldiers still counting their wounded, running from the two bodies, that of her grandfather and that of a random soldier of the Republic. In later days, she would try to tell herself that it was necessary, that he threw his lot in with the Republic, but for now, all she can think is how similar the two bodies are.
SPAMOVERLORD
Darkness above and darkness below | Protect the future, on with the show
How’s that for dark eh?
GRRM, I’m coming for you.
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Topic: (SG) SPAMOVERLORD: Epilogue: Guest Week (Read 308288 times)