Season 1: Episode 7 – The Last Council

This series contains mature themes and is intended for adult listeners.

>Begin Porta Cor imprint.<

The last time the Council of Elders drew blood, Anturia burned for a century.

We told ourselves we were more evolved than our ancestors.

We were not.

As soon as the three of us cleared the wooden doors into the chamber, the doors slammed shut behind us.

The lights flickered at the same moment as if they had been candles that the wind knocked about, but we didn’t use candles.

In the dim light, I saw a flicker of blades appear from various directions, so I reached for my own with my right hand and pushed Oswalt to the floor, slightly to the side and behind me, so he was on the ground up against the wall as a protective measure.

I didn’t hear a sound from Dahlfia’s movements, but I knew she was already armed and waiting. For a split second, as the light went completely out, there was not one single sound. Not even a breath.

Then the light came back on, glaring in full force in an attempt to blind us, but my eyes adjusted quickly. I was thankful, because I was able to turn and parry a blow of a blade coming for my left shoulder. I could tell out of the corner of my eye that Dahlfia was also engaged in combat.

The council room was one sea of bodies clashing and moving. There were shouts and screams. Grunts. Limbs and shining blades flying through the air in all directions.

I stabbed someone in the hand, but I don’t know who it was. As I whirled about from that blow to parry another attack, I saw that Dahlfia and I were not the only ones fighting against Mallaidh and her allies. This gave me some small glint of hope, but I suspected we were all still outnumbered.

As Dahlfia and I fought, Oswalt managed to get back to his feet and stood there frozen with his back against the wall near the main chamber doors we had come into just a moment before. I noticed Murithir, who had jumped off the dais, was now running toward Oswalt at full speed with a large, wicked sword drawn.

I kicked hard against my assailant, sending her backwards into a table where she crumpled, unconscious, and then I lunged toward the form of Murithir to intercept him.

Oswalt tried to back up but had nowhere to go and stumbled back down to the ground again.

Murithir was almost on top of him, sword raised for his neck. I moved without thinking. My blade caught him between the ribs. He twisted toward me, rage in his eyes, raising his sword. Then Dahlfia was behind him. Her blade through his back, out his chest.

He jerked forward, and blood sprayed everywhere on Oswalt and me. His angry eyes were so intense as blood began to flow out of his mouth. I pulled my knife out of his side, and Dahlfia pulled her sword out of him, and he collapsed to the ground in a bloody, lifeless mess.

Dahlfia and I locked eyes for a moment. She was as covered in blood as I was. I turned to help Oswalt back up as Dahlfia started waving those still loyal to us over to pry open the wooden doors so we could escape.

I got him, and across the room on the dais, I saw Mallaidh looking over at us. She had personal guards around her and other loyalists. She yelled across the chamber to me, “History will remember who drew first blood.” Then she turned and ran down a side corridor out of the chamber with her entourage in tow. It was at that moment that I noticed Tynaref’s bloody body left behind on the dais. Silence hadn’t provided her with the safety she hoped for.

I turned with Oswalt to go through the door that Dahlfia and our other loyal councilors cleared for us by killing the guards on the other side. We ran down the hallways, fighting off pockets of guards and Mallaidh loyalists as they ran across us at various intersections.

Dahlfia took the lead and led us away from the main corridor, out to one of the side exits to the building used by service staff. One by one, we all filed out into the streets, with Dahlfia and me remaining by the door to make sure everyone got out safely.

“Keep your Porta Cors closed to anyone but us,” I advised them. “Go get your families and leave the city. We’ll regroup. Get to safety.” I instructed.

A loud explosion a few blocks away made me look up as they all scattered to follow my instructions, and smoke billowed out of a section of town where many of our oldest and most prestigious homes were located.

“Come on,” I told Dahlfia and Oswalt. I started running down the street.

“Where are we going?” Dahlfia called as she and Oswalt followed.

“Home. We’re going to get my family and Kylah’s family and leave.”

Oswalt interrupted, “But what if they’re already broadcasting…”

“I’m not leaving them behind,” I yelled without turning back to them and ran faster.

The streets were absolute chaos with violence and running, crying, and yelling. Dahlfia and I had to fight off guards and a few attackers along the way between the Council Hall and my home.

I tried to steer us to lesser-used streets, but our way was often hindered by masses of humans looking fearful, since they had no idea what was happening and did not receive the Porta Cor broadcasts.

Finally, we arrived at my block. Houses here and there were burning or damaged, or both. My pulse seemed to stop as I passed the wreckage of Kylah’s home and saw the utter devastation done there. It almost didn’t look like a home, but a charred ruin of a paper box.

My eyes started to burn as they shifted toward my house. The door was kicked in and hanging half off the hinges. There was no smoke or burning, but the silence choked me.

Dahlfia and Oswalt were further back as Dahlfia had slowed to keep pace with the slower Oswalt.

I ran down the sidewalk and into the open doorway. Blood pooled everywhere in the entrance hall and into the living area. A couple of bodies of guards were dead and lifeless in various awkward poses. I stepped over them largely unnoticing until I came to Pensaer. Her lifeless form was face up. Her eyes opened with shock and pain, frozen in time at the moment of her death. She had her arms spread open wide, and I followed them out to her hands and back to her body. She was completely covered in blood and stabbed so many times I nearly vomited.

Suddenly, underneath her left side, where blood pooled out of her more readily, I saw the tiniest little hand stretched out and upward. The tiny pendant of the necklace hung limply off her fingers by the chain. Frozen in time, just like her mother.

I kneeled beside them and touched that tiny little hand. It was so cold. I held it just a moment with my own hands as Dahlfia and Oswalt came into the room behind me.

I didn’t hear them, because all I could hear was my own heart pounding in my head.

From somewhere far away, I heard, “Bryn.”

My heart pounded louder.

“Bryn.” It was muffled at best.

 I felt a gentle hand touch my shoulder. I turned my head to see Dahlfia’s face looking down at me. “Bryn.”  I blinked at her, unable to respond.

I saw Oswalt look at me next, and then I heard him say, “We need to go.” Sounds of violence from outside were starting to billow back into the area.

Dahlfia let go of me, and I heard her tell Oswalt, “Stay with her.”

Oswalt convinced me to let go of Afanen’s hand, but I took the necklace with me.

Dahlfia moved to the kitchen and then came back. “Kylah’s mother-in-law, Ffion, and sister, Arianwen, are both dead in the kitchen.” She said before moving one door down the hallway to my office. “Kylah’s here.” I heard her say and watched her bend down over something dark on the floor in the hallway just outside my office, not far from the kitchen.

I rose and stumbled over that way even though it was hard to see at this point. Dahlfia was checking her. “She’s alive. She’s lost a lot of blood.” I could see Kylah’s violet eyes flickering a bit as if struggling to hold onto consciousness.

Four dead guards in the kitchen. Three dead guards in the hallway.

There was another explosion outside. This one was closer. I didn’t move, but Dahlfia and Oswalt jumped from the unexpectedness of it. “We need to get out of here, now,” Dahlfia said. “Oswalt, help me with Kylah.”  Together, they bound up the wounds where Kylah was bleeding the most and then picked her up. By then, she was a little more conscious, looking around in a daze, much like I was.

Dahlfia ordered Oswalt, “Take Bryn out, and I’ll get Kylah out.”  Oswalt held my hand and walked me out of my house as I was still in a complete stupor, and Dahlfia followed with Kylah propped up against her side.

Dahlfia got us into an abandoned capsule. I don’t remember how. I was across from Kylah. She murmured to me, “I wanted to save them.” I blinked at her. “They knew…you would come here.” And then she passed out.

Dahlfia, who was climbing into the capsule, locked eyes with me. Oswalt tilted his head, “What did she say?” My mouth was dry, but I managed to say, “She tried.”

Dahlfia programmed the capsule, and we managed to get out of Teithia before total anarchy blocked the streets in or out of the city.   After we got a great distance from the city and crested a ridge, we all looked back out the window to the community we had called home.

Massive amounts of smoke billowed out from the distant skyline, black and inky against the afternoon sky.

Numbly, I looked over at Oswalt, who stared out the window at nothing with tears welling up in his eyes. Then over to Kylah, who became momentarily conscious again, but obviously incredibly weakened and struggling. Dahlfia was looking at all of us in turn. Her jaw was hard and set—a fiery determination in her green eyes.

Then I looked back against the skyline and just stared as it shrank from view.

Somewhere in the distance, as Anturians hid, fled, or died in the streets, they began to receive a message: “Mallaidh declares emergency leadership in the wake of violent insurgency. She assumes full authority.”

Teithia fell that night.

Not to humans.

Not to monsters.

To us.

>End Porta Cor imprint.<