Fallout 1. 80

80

Julia lined up his head in her crosshairs. Just a solitary raider, maybe an 80, not worth the cost of the bullet. She was going to kill him, as there was never a time she didn't feel like killing something, but she shouldered her gun, a massive sniper rifle built to tear through the hull of a tank. She opted for her hunting shotgun, a weapon she kept for close kills. She liked the visceral thrill of the scattershot tearing through flesh and bone, she loved the splatter of blood on her coat and face.

Her first shot grazed his head, a calculated shot that a more seasoned warrior might recognize, but the 80 took the bait and charged with tire iron at the ready. She feigned another wild shot just so she could see him grin as he ran at her. He was almost on top of her when she leveled the gun with calm precision and blew his face inwards. She smiled slowly as the droplets of warm blood cooled on her face.

She dug through the rags and strips of old tire the 80 had been wearing for armor, searching gingerly for drugs. She taught her girls caution with a made-up story about a Daughter who accidentally pricked herself on a junkie's psycho needle and died of an autoimmune deficiency disease. Although the story was made-up she had actually seen many people die that way. She'd personally started a clean needle initiative, one of her proudest accomplishments. She didn't have to worry about shit like that in Legion turf, though, for a variety of reasons.

She came away with two syringes of Med-X, which she considered a good score for a single raider. Avata followed the sound of the shotgun, more out of curiosity than concern.

"Just a raider. I think it's an 80," Julia gave a swift kick to the headless corpse.

"I don't think we're far enough north for the 80s," Avata scanned the landscape hungrily, "Think there are more?"

Julia furrowed her brow. "I'm pretty sure we're near Elko. Near enough." They'd been traveling more than six weeks, on a contract from the Malpais Legate to harass settlements. They were to pave the way for Caesar's glorious Nevada campaign, but Julia was skeptical that would ever come to pass. Looking around she couldn't understand the appeal. She supposed megalomania allowed a man to find beauty in whatever wasn't his. "Near enough for the 80s."

It had been a rough road. It turned out that there was very little in the northern Nevada wasteland, and they were beginning to run out of resources. The vast plane between Elko and Ouroboros was a hellish purgatory. Julia was beginning to harbor paranoid delusions that the contract was some plot on her life. The legate was a brutal man but he lacked for subtlety, if he was going to try and kill them he'd make it a brutal one-man campaign of unabashed warfare. Perhaps she angered the goddess somehow? Had the goddess finally realized, and in bitterness lashed out by sending Julia and her squad on a suicide mission? Maybe the goddess had used her powers to figure out which among her flock was the wolf. A monster. A creature twisted by hate and malice and an unsatisfiable bloodlust.

Julia was being ridiculous, of course. Obviously the goddess knew which among her Daughters was the most hateful, most vicious, most unstoppably cruel and murderous. The most cunning and unscrupulous. The most brutal and cunning Daughter was the goddess' personal lieutenant. Julia Aram of the Twisted Hairs. There was no one better.

"We've secured camp, commander," Marceline approached Julia and Avata, "We're about seven miles from Elko, according to Tiegan," Marce smiled maliciously, "We found a weapons cache," she held up a red and blue Interstate 80 sign and her smile grew wider and darker. The three of them returned to camp, to rest before the real fighting began in earnest tomorrow.


	2. Firsts

Firsts

When Julia was eight years old, she drowned a boy who was a year younger than her. She did it just to see if she could. She told the tribe leader he fell in.


	3. A Pack of Wolves

A Pack of Wolves

Mortuus Anima, the dead soul. It was he who killed the warlord Tarsuus, who burned The Serpent to ash, who crushed the Manti-La, who grinned as Pueblo burned. Those under him were called the dead souls and Caesar himself praised their viciousness. Dead Soul's men contained the Legion's only ghoul legionaries, savage creatures and semi-feral as was befitting the dead souls' contubernia.

Mortuus was decanus only in a nominal sense. In the hierarchy he held the rank of decanus, and commanded his contubernia under a centurion. His men certainly gave him great respect, and followed him wherever he lead them. He was bestowed authority over them by the authority over himself. But to say he was a leader, a commander was absurd. He could lead or command no more than an animal, a particularly savage animal. The legion pointed him in the direction of things to be killed, even let him hand pick his own coterie of other savage animals, but he was little more than a creature bred and bought for the purposes of killing, and it reflected in his every manner.

When the dead souls took on the warlord Tarsuus, it was a frontal assault, straightforward and uncomplicated. They lost men but at a ratio of nearly five to one, their attacks so brutal and swift. Mortuus himself wielded only a piece of lead pipe and crushed a dozen skulls. The sounds of the legionaries' battle calls, the hellish howls of the ghoul legionaries broke the spirit of the defenders, and they surrendered before the dead souls' bloodlust was satisfied.

Perhaps if Tarsuus had been a more inspiring leader, maybe if he had encouraged more loyalty from his personal militia more of them would have been willing to fall for him. Perhaps if the dead souls' had more opportunity to sate their base desires to destroy and kill and maim, if during the battle they had been given more opportunity to sate their lust for carnage, more shattered skulls for their own satisfaction, then maybe the warlord Tarsuus would have been spared. Perhaps if he hadn't spent the entire battle sitting on his ass on a throne built of garbage, assured that this fight was a little skirmish no different from the other raider skirmishes his compound often faced, despite the fact that he was warned well in advance that the legion wasn't just another raiding party by the small townships he used to extort money from, perhaps if he had been at the balustrade commanding his warriors with bravery and courage, well he certainly wouldn't have won but then perhaps the dead souls' wouldn't have seen fit to make an example of him. Perhaps if he hadn't pissed off his most skilled warrior, a former Brotherhood of Steel soldier whose deadly aim with a magnum afforded Tarsuus the luxury to grow complacent, by making an aggressive, entitled pass at her less than a week before so that after killing two dead souls with her entire chamber and realizing that this was the most powerful enemy the warlord had ever faced she made a sensible escape rather than staying and defending and with her skill alone possibly turning the tide of the battle... perhaps Tarsuus would have lived.

As it stood when his defenders surrendered, the dead souls marched into his hall, ignored his protests, grabbed him and dragged him outside to his own courtyard and threw him down into the dirt. Then they wordlessly removed to the edges of the courtyard, forming a circle. Tarsuus saw his men and women at the mercy of the legion, saw the destruction to his fortifications, one tower still engulfed in flames smelling rich of burning rubber and trash. He rose from the dirt and saw him. Mortuus Anima. He wore unique armor, all black leather topped with the legionary shoulder-pads, and a white cowboy hat that cast his face in shadow. Tarsuus wasn't a small man, certainly, but the figure plodding assuredly through the ruined archways of the compound's former gate was massive, a brutish walking tank. He was wrapping his fists in tape and cracking his knuckles hungrily. There was nowhere for Tarsuus to run from this giant black mass of muscle and hatred, but to the warlord's credit he had no intention of running. It was a poor choice, to stand and fight, but the warlord didn't think of anything else.

Mortuus let the warlord have the first hit. Tarsuus charged him with a blow to the face, which the decanus did not react to. Instead, he grabbed Tarsuus by the shoulders and kneed him in the stomach, twice. While the warlord was doubled over Mortuus punched him in the face. The smack of fist against cheek echoed. The decanus kneed the warlord again, this time lifting him off the ground. The warlord fell, and the decanus kicked him viciously. The decanus felt the warlord's ribs splinter through his leather boot. The decanus picked the warlord up by the shoulders and led him to the wall, which he threw the warlord into repeatedly. The warlord stumbled backwards, vision blurred and blood trickling down his weathered face. The decanus broke his nose with a left-handed punch. He fell to the ground and Mortuus pounced. When he looked up, he could see the decanus smiling. His big brown eyes were wide with an unrestrained glee. He gripped the warlord's face in his hands, oblivious to the warlord's desperate attempts to push him off. He slowly drove his thumb into the warlord's eye, deeper and deeper as he screamed. He dug around in the socket, then did the same to the other eye. He felt the fight drain from his opponent's body. He got up and began to walk away, seemingly leaving in disgust, only to turn around and finish the warlord off by stomping on his face until all that remained was dirt muddied by blood. The Dead Soul never fought without killing.

He very rarely gave orders. After killing Tarsuus, the Dead Soul merely walked away, leaving his unofficial second-in-command, Reave, to order the dead souls to round up prisoners and return to camp. The slaves would gather supplies. Reave always spoke for Mortuus, as though they had some special connection, an invisible bond which allowed Reave to give Mortuus' orders, even though Mortuus never spoke to him or anyone. Although it wasn't ever difficult to guess what Mortuus wanted done. March, kill, or guard, they anticipated his every theoretical command and followed them to the letter. A pack of wolves, not men. Animals for the legion.


	4. The Fire

The Fire

Athena loved the Crazy Horns. She loved life among them. It wasn't just that they deferred to her judgement in all matters. She really did care for them, as though they were her own people. She taught children how to paint, she counseled young couples, she taught them how to braid and dread their hair. Her proudest moment was by far the time she saved a life.

Longhorn was not the strongest, or the fastest, but he was the bravest hunter among the Crazy Horns. He wasn't stupid brave, he knew how to pick his targets. He wasn't stupid enough to target anything more dangerous than a hunter gecko. On a hunting party trip by the Great Salt Lake he overexerted himself, though, thinking he could take on three geckos at once. He was nearly torn limb from limb, saved at the last second by the other hunters using poison and spoiling the meat. He couldn't be moved, they were going to leave him in the wasteland to die. They even talked about killing him themselves, as a mercy. He convinced them not to, that he didn't want to be killed by his tribesmen. So they left him, amid poison gecko meat and with only a single granite club.

They returned to the tribe and told everyone the story when they asked what happened to Longhorn. Athena had never had much connection to him, she couldn't even recall what he looked like amid the faces of all the other hunters in the tribe, but something welled up inside her. A fire that compelled her to ask the hunters where they left him. They begged her not to go, told her it was too late, way too late to do anything to help him. They even physically tried to stop her, before she reminded them of her power. They withdrew in fear, but begged her to take a few of them with her, for protection. She agreed and they went straight back to Longhorn.

They found him mostly dead and half-crazed. In desperation he had eaten some of the poisoned gecko meat, and drank a little sea-water. It would take a miracle to keep him alive for even an hour after they arrived. And yet, Athena saved him. She hadn't even come with adequate medical supplies, but she was able to use the local flora to save him. He lost a leg and a hand, but in a week he was strong enough to be carried back to the village on a stretcher made of gecko leather and carried by the other hunters. They returned to the Crazy Horns triumphant, and from that point on Athena was the matriarch of the tribe.


	5. Bad People

Bad People

Athena had worn the busted slave collar for so long she'd forgotten it was even there, the old familiar weight around her neck just more tribal jewelery. It had grown to be just as much a part of her as her fingers or toes. Once there was a time where every morning she woke up screaming, clawing at the metal and crying. That time had been long past before she came to the Crazy Horns.

When she arrived none of them asked her about it. They assumed it was decorative, adornment and luxurious adornment at that. All the Crazy Horns worshiped Athena like she taught them to worship the goddess. Every aspect of her was fetishized, from her dusky skin to her knotted dreads to the AEP7 laser pistol slung at her hip. The Crazy Horns were particularly infatuated by the laser pistol, for one reason or another they rarely if ever saw any energy weapons. Athena assumed it was ignorance, ignorance of the world as was and the ignorance of the world as before. It was not surprising to her to use energy weapons. Athena had encountered more than a few enemies who wielded laser pistols and plasma rifles. The Crazy Horns were impressed by the technological advancements, in fact they were awed and terrified by something as simple as Athena's weaponry, despite Athena's almost total disdain of her pistol. To her it represented a culture of fear, a culture of paranoia that preferred military action to understanding. Athena did not support that, a society of fear. Yet the Crazy Horns were inspired by her weaponry to create a culture of the laser. The "dancing light" they called it. They begged her to fire it into the air so they could see the light shoot upwards and disappear into the stars.

She was not impressed by this display of ignorance by the tribe. She wondered how had they not come to fear and hate laser weaponry? She was slightly resentful, with each shot she obligingly made for the Crazy Horns she began to bitterly wonder why no one had ever shot these people with a laser rifle. She had learned to fear and respect laser weaponry from a very young age, when her family was attacked by raiders and one of them was carrying a laser assault rifle. She saw her eldest brother disintegrate to a pile of smoking ash in front of her very eyes. She would never be entranced by the flashing of the weapon's beam, and it disturbed her that these people she considered her new family were so naïve.

Athena blamed it on the Canaanites. The mormons had a strong grip on the area, defending local tribes. Sheltering them from the true dangers of the waste. Thanks to New Canaan the Crazy Horns hadn't encountered a raider attack in years. Occasionally a convoy would arrive, with supplies for trade. They'd bring missionaries, too, preaching scripture to the tribe. Athena didn't know what they were talking about, but it sounded like a threat to her mission. For months she would hide from mormon convoys, planning her trips back to Ouroboros in conjunction with the missionaries' visits. It was an encounter with a child, a child of the tribe named Too Much, that inspired her to take action.

They were by the stream, Athena was teaching the boy numbers with rocks. He wasn't paying much attention, drifting in and out of the lecture, playing with the rocks instead of counting them. Occasionally his eyes flicked to her neck. She could feel the question coming.

"Why do you wear that necklace?" he asked innocently.

"I can't take it off," She bent down to his level to demonstrate. She pulled at the slave collar, demonstrated the mangled lock.

"Why'd you put it on?"

"I didn't put it on. Someone put it on me. Some bad people made me wear it and now I can't get it off," she tugged at the collar with more urgency. The metal bit into the back of her neck.

"Bad people?" Too Much asked, clearly unfamiliar with the concept.

"Bad people," she instinctively placed a hand on her gun, "The world is full of bad people, people who want to hurt, and kill, and make people their slaves. Force them to do things they wouldn't do," she elaborated, "Put them in cages, tie them up."

The young boy wrinkled his nose. "I don't think you're telling the truth. I think you're making stuff up."

That was when Athena realized it was time. She was here to educate these tribals, and she was going to educate them. She was going to teach them the true face of the wasteland. She was going to teach them fear. She was going to teach them respect, of her and her pistol.

It was fairly easy to convince the tribe to ambush the New Canaanite convoy. They believed everything she told them, that they were being poisoned by the traders, being poisoned in body and in mind. It was a fairly simple matter to convince them to rid themselves of this corrupting influence.

They killed about half the convoy, and the other half surrendered. They ransacked the supplies, forced the remaining New Canaanites to their knees. Athena spoke to the tribe.

"I come from a tribe, myself. A different tribe than the Crazy Horns, or the Canaanites. I come from a tribe of conquerors," she told them. She executed each of the Canaanites, one at a time. Dissolved each and every one to a smoking pile of ash.


	6. Night Shift

Night Shift

Ev thought Julia was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life. She was tiny, black, and had big brown eyes forever in a heavy-lidded weariness which set him off. She had a habit of rolling her eyes at him and making faces which he couldn't resist. She was intimidating, she always seemed to know everything about anything and anyone. She made him feel so small when they worked together it made him feel three times as big when they had sex.

"Hey, you got the night shift?" he caught her sipping coffee outside the emergency response tent.

"Oh, no, I never get the night shift," she took a sip from her cup. "I'm way too lucky for that. Just can't sleep is all."

"That's probably the coffee," Ev cracked.

"You think?" she asked between more sips. That was always how it was with Julia, that little _I know something and I'm not telling_ smile that would piss the other Followers off if it weren't for the fact that she was the best damn doctor out of all of them. It was a wonder to watch her work, cleaning wounds and fighting infections. Although the camp wasn't set up to handle much more than the usual wasteland injuries (bites, scratches, and burns) Julia had demonstrated proficiency in much more advanced medical practices, such as surgery to remove cancerous growths. She was especially skilled at delivering children, which she attributed to years of being an apprentice midwife in her tribe.

Once Amelia cracked if Julia was the kind of tribal the wasteland produced, there should be more tribals. Julia smiled a little but got very quiet when she said that. Ev didn't need an explanation. He'd heard the news of a particularly powerful band of raiders killing off tribals in the east. Julia carried the weight of tragedy with her, everyone could see it. It helped her relate to the people they helped, although Ev couldn't help but notice she seemed to treat people with the same robotic perfectionism whether she was stitching them up or talking them through PTSD.

"Anyway who's to say I wouldn't like to help even though it isn't my shift?" Julia smiled. Her teeth lit up the night. Ev was about to say something when there was suddenly a cacophony of chaotic confusion from the camp's gate. There was screaming and wailing, everyone in the whole camp was up. Jacob, the head camp guard was waving his pistol around in the air. There was a crowd of doctors and guards headed straight for Ev and Julia.

"We need to get him strapped down!" Amelia was screaming. "Alec, get the table prepped!"

Julia and Ev gave the incoming doctors a wide berth. They were all surrounding a struggling figure, a person with a bag on their head. The bag-headed person was fighting fanatically, like an animal. Julia pegged it as rabies, and didn't expect there was anything to be done. The doctors with the help of the guards brought the hooded figure into the tent and forced it onto the table, strapping it down.

"Patient's name is Edward Wong, prospector," Alec told everyone as soon as Ed was strapped to the table. "At about noon yesterday he and three other prospectors, Mac, Duff, and Sally, entered one of the underground complexes near Hopeville, and have been missing until Edward was discovered milling near a cave entrance. Subject appears to have been attacked, no gunshot wounds but what appear to be claw marks have left deep gashes in his sides." Julia observed Edward and noted that he did appear to have been attacked by something, most likely a deathclaw. If deathclaws in the area were infected with rabies it was going to be a big problem. Like an NCR-abandoning-the-area problem. "Patient appears to be in shock."

Alec pulled the hood off of Ed and everyone recoiled. Ed howled at them, his eyes rolling madly in his sockets. "We need a sedative!" someone yelled in the chaos. Julia grabbed Jacob's pistol from his hand, walked over to Ed and shot him in the face, in between the eyes. She didn't even put down her coffee cup. Suddenly everything was quiet. Julia returned Jacob's gun into his hand, he looked at it blankly like he'd never seen it before in his life.

"Zombies turn feral," Julia explained herself to no one in particular, then walked off. Everyone looked from her to the ghoul she had just shot, now still and lifeless in his straps.

Ev was shocked. He had never seen Julia weld a weapon before, much less so casually. She had just plucked it out of Jacob's hands without him even noticing. She hadn't even put down her goddamn coffee to kill a man. Ev was beginning to realize he knew even less than he thought he did about her. When he returned to his room she was waiting for him, half naked in his bed.

"C'mon, Everett, let's fuck," she writhed seductively in front of him. He could only stare. "Killing always..." she stared into his eyes and bit her finger. "I just love it, y'know," she gasped and fell backwards in ecstasy. Ev instinctively pulled away. "What?" she noticed, "What? Oh, fuck you!" she got up and zipped up her pants, pulled on her shirt and stormed out. Ev didn't follow her so he didn't know that after she went outside she felt dumb and alone.


	7. Following

Following

Julia didn't know why the goddess had sent her here, to this place they called a division. To this place they called a place of hope. It was part of the Goddess' mystics, her undefinable knowledge that had her give Julia the task to cross the mojave into the Divide. She had simply claimed it was a place "of great importance." A place where the future of the wasteland was to be shaped. Julia supposed that was reason enough to send agents there.

The Goddess had sent Julia in particular, though. She had said it was because the Divide was a place "of great importance" not just for the wasteland, but for Julia as well. She didn't know what that meant then, the ominous implications ringing in her ears traveling through some of the worst communities she'd ever seen, and she didn't know what it meant now, as she was delicately fiddling with her revolver.

It was a work of beauty, an 1851 Colt Navy Cartridge Conversion with a custom cylinder and silver snake grips. A work of art. She hadn't used it since she crossed the Colorado. She'd wrapped in a piece of cloth and secreted it on her person. She'd decided it was more prudent to not carry a weapon in the Mojave, and she'd been right. When she came to the Divide and met the Followers at Hopeville she'd hidden the cloth bundle with her revolver in a rocky outcropping.

Coming to Hopeville had been a revelation. It was the first time she'd ever met the New California Republic, and she was awed. She didn't like the NCR any more than she liked any other wasteland army, but she appreciated their power. She knew the Legion was some sick joke, men playing dress-up to bully and terrorize tribes, but the NCR was an honest-to-God nation. A unified peoples who weren't just playing dress-up, who had a government and laws. The NCR made the legion look like children.

Even still Julia probably had less love for the NCR than she had for the Legion. With children there was some call for pity, to pity their innocence, to pity their lack of understanding about their actions and the world around them. The Legion was pathetic. The NCR didn't have that excuse. These weren't children without any awareness. They were adults in a savage world, people with responsibilities, and it was obvious they weren't fulfilling these responsibilities. The Legion crawled over the weak, scrambling desperately to get ahead. The NCR stood tall on the weak and powerless, grinding them into the dirt when they could help them up. Just a bunch of rich fucks comfortable in seclusion from a terrible world. Hopeville was the first place Julia saw fat people.

Yet she found some people, a group of people who she could relate to, people whom she could not dismiss as exploiters or thugs. The Followers of the Apocalypse reminded her of a tribe, but a tribe united not for survival or strength, a tribe united by the desire to above all help. Help those in need, help the weak and the desperate and the sickly. The Followers were what she wished the NCR were, privileged people using their privilege to help, not being content and complacent. Her first assumption was that no-one could be that benevolent. A life in the Arizona wastes had led her to believe that human nature precluded charity and kindness. She believed that there was sinister motivation behind the Follower's actions. It was a natural response, up until then the Goddess and her daughters were the most benevolent and charitable community she'd ever encountered. Everyone expected something, nobody did anything for nothing, did something just because it was the right thing to do. Yet a week went by and before long Julia felt the creeping innocence and optimism she believed she had left behind a long time ago.

What at first was just a place to sleep became a home, and she offered to help the Followers. Amelia, a tall woman with an unusual haircut accepted her happily, even before Julia told her she had medical training. Julia half expected Amelia to disregard her, to assume that her 'medical training' was tribal bullshit, rituals passed down from generation to generation and which made a lot of noise but were about as healing as a jab with a sharp stick. In truth, Julia had learned a lot of garbage from the tribe's herbalist, salves which just infected wounds and showy prayers intended to cure serious illnesses. Julia had improved upon her tribe's overall health with her own personal efforts (which included something as simple as _cleaning her medical tools_), but her medical knowledge had become quite extensive since then, supplemented with help from Circle of Steel medical training and the knowledge of the Goddess Hecate, which surpassed even the pre-war military the Circle learned from. She couldn't tell Amelia about the Goddess, but she could demonstrate her knowledge and to her surprise Amelia let her. Amelia wasn't condescending, she wasn't humoring Julia, she actually listened and treated her with respect. Julia tossed around a few advanced medical terms and described some procedures step-by-step, she talked with confidence and Amelia put her to work right away. Her implicit faith in Julia was so overwhelming and new that Julia cried after her first day, wept joyfully in private.

Julia found new reasons to be proud every day. Once, a prospector offered to give her a small fortune for saving her sister's life, and she turned it down without a second thought, telling the woman to give it to Amelia and the Followers, or failing that to give it to someone who needed it. She wore her Follower's coat as a badge of honor. She made friends with the other Followers, she started a relationship with a gentle man who had been born into wealth and had decided to help people.

It wasn't until the ghoul, until she once again felt the visceral thrill of murder that she realized she was still missing something. That for all the good she had done it wasn't enough.

She had treated Eddie Wong personally, a month or so before she shot him in the head with Jacob's gun. All her life she had felt a certain kind of hatred for ghouls. She just didn't like them, their flaky skin or their raspy voices. She felt a resentment, she sometimes felt like they were more suited to the wasteland, that this was their time and place and she was an outsider in the world of the ghouls. Eddie had not helped her resentment. In fact, he had bragged about how well-adapted he was to surviving in harsh environments. Obviously he was insecure, not just because ghouls frequently were prejudiced against even in Hopeville, but because he was being treated by a pretty girl. He was trying to impress her, and she noticed, but he still agitated her own insecurities. She gave him aid with the same passion she put into all her work, though, because she was a fanatical Follower and firmly believed in helping for the sake of helping.

Then nearly a month later she had to shoot him in the face. In one instant she discovered the limits of the Followers, she discovered her own limits. She couldn't help Eddie Wong with kindness and care. The Followers had taken a stupid risk to try and help him as such.

She wondered if Eddie had ever been worth helping, but ultimately she decided he had been. The event only strengthened her resolve, but she realized that she needed to move on. She started scavenging parts from the auto-docs which littered the Divide, figuring out how they worked when even the NCR didn't. She began to borrow liberally from the medical supplies of all Divide dwellers. She retrieved her gun.

Her last act in the Divide was a seduction. She romanced a female NCR guard, one of the elites in riot armor. She fucked her, then slit her throat in the night. Stole her armor, stole everything from the NCR military hospital and left. Julia loved the Followers of the Apocalypse, but she wasn't a follower. Julia was a leader.


	8. Legion Warpaint

Legion Warpaint

They brought the prisoners to the Legate one at a time, threw them to the ground at his feet. They told them to get on their knees. The Malpais Legate would wait a moment, seemingly hesitating, contemplating the kill. Then, without speaking, he would execute them with his pistol. The Dead Souls would retrieve another prisoner, drag them out to the Legate, throw them at his feet.

"On your knees," Scratch rasped. His face had been twisted by ghoulification into a permanent sneer, a curling cleft lip at the corner of his mouth. He wore nothing into battle but rags wrapped around his waist and a centurion helmet, a breech of dress code but fitting for a creature whose very service defied the emperor.

The man obeyed the Legion ghoul and got to his knees, looking at the corpses of his fallen comrades left to rot in the sun on the open road. He stared into the eyes of the Legate, eyes which held no remorse, no mercy, no pity. Hard eyes, harder than any stone in the wasteland. The Legate raised his pistol, aimed right into the man's forehead. The cold steel of the Legate's Colt .45 mimicked his cold steel glare. Around him Dead Souls breathed heavily, excited to see the man's body decorate the road with the bodies of his peers.

"I... I pledge loyalty to the Legion!" the man shouted fearfully and desperately. "I pledge loyalty to Caesar!"

The Dead Souls all groaned, and the Legate lowered his weapon. The man fell back in relief, tears running silently down his cheeks.

"Put him with the slaves," the Legate's baritone caused the man to tremble. He was picked up roughly by Scratch and Mortuus, dragged into a separate pen packed to full with beaten and bruised men and women wearing rags and slave collars. It didn't look ideal, but it was better than dying, the man thought. Before they unlocked the cage, though, Mortuus and Scratch turned to the man.

"This is your official induction to the Legion," Scratch rasped as Mortuus threw the man into the fence, "Congratulations." Scratch smiled as Mortuus beat the man in front of the slaves, focusing mostly on his face and chest. Each hit felt like a blow from a sledgehammer. When the man couldn't stand anymore Mortuus held him against the fence, punching his face again and again.

This was their usual ritual for inducting new slaves. 'Legion warpaint' was what they called it when the new slave's face was covered in their own blood. The men they beat until they were almost dead, the women and children they did worse to. When the man finally had his 'legion warpaint' they threw him in the cage with the other slaves, who had watched dispassionately and did not embrace the new slave. "Welcome to the Legion," Scratch spit and then laughed a laugh like rusted metal. Mortuus said nothing, just stroked his knuckles and smiled small and vicious.


	9. Birth of a Daughter

Birth of a Daughter

Athena always had to remember that not too long ago she had been just like the Crazy Horns. Her own life as a tribal, eking out a subsistence living was not so far behind her that she couldn't still recall the words of her elder, couldn't still remember her husband's rough hands caressing her face in their tent made of hide and scrap.

Athena had been married at thirteen, when she reached puberty, as was traditional among her people. By fourteen she would've had her first child, had it not been stillborn. She remembered the moment, holding her son in her hands, her son who never grew up. She remembered how she felt at that time, and it made her a little sick whenever she remembered how relieved she had felt. Holding the tiny body in her hands she felt relief that this boy, her boy, would never have to live in the wasteland. Would never have to sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice for so little, would never have to fight every day for survival. She wept bitter tears for another soul saved from the wasteland. That was life in the tribe. Death was everywhere, and it wouldn't be long after their son that her husband was gone, too. After the death of her husband she withdrew from everyone. She knew it didn't matter, that it wouldn't be long before they were gone, too. She was right.

That was life in the wasteland. It wasn't any different for the Crazy Horns, or at least that was what she told herself. She knew it was different for the Crazy Horns, though. They weren't her old tribe. They'd been coddled by the Canaanites, and now they were being aided by her and the Daughters of Hecate. Athena's efforts had all but eliminated miscarriages in the tribe, which introduced a new problem of providing food for everyone. It put the Crazy Horns in a perilous place, feeding the adults or feeding their children. Although Athena had at first appeared to be a boon, in truth she was anything but.

Heartsong had no complications in her pregnancy, she was a healthy young woman who was well taken care of by her family. It was her first child, and Athena predicted a boy. Whenever a new baby was to be born Athena would return to Ouroboros a few weeks in advance and return with more Daughters. The tribe never questioned it, they had long since stopped questioning Athena and her knowledge. They didn't question why the birth was always in secret, how no one could attend but the Daughters. How the mother never quite remembered what happened afterwards. Most importantly the tribe never questioned why all their children had become so sickly.

Heartsong's labor was long, almost a full twenty-four hours. Athena was aided by her sisters Carrie and Ruth, who had much experience with the ritual. They doped the mother heavily, and when Heartsong gave birth they took her child away. Athena stayed and comforted her, gave her more medication, water, held her hand and congratulated her. Ruth and Carrie returned with an infant swaddled in cloth. They handed it to Heartsong, told her it was her son. She named him, his family name. It was not his family, but they named him. She was not his mother, but she named him.

Athena was always correct about the gender of the child. Never once was she wrong, her predictions unerring in every birth. The tribe considered it part of her mystic ability. After Heartsong's labor, Ruth and Carrie returned to Ouroboros. They took with them Heartsong's actual child, a girl. It was in this way the Daughters of Hecate weakened the tribes. Athena considered it saving them.


	10. Child versus Child

Child versus Child

There were no Dirty Hops over eighteen years old. It was a tribe comprised entirely of children, and that is why the Legion underestimated them. It should have occurred to the Legate that the tribe which had lived with the serpent for centuries would be more than prepared for battle.

In their first conflict the Legion was slaughtered by children wielding guns and tomahawks. The Dirty Hops attacked and ran, attacked the Legion on all sides, pushed them into a narrow canyon and slaughtered them all. It was a bloodbath. The Dirty Hops were vicious, they held nothing back. The Legion had no compunctions against slaughtering children, many of the Legionaries were children, but they had to catch the Dirty Hops before they could kill them. Only the youngest, quickest, and most agile made direct attacks. The older tribals held back, took their shots and then moved. They knew the terrain, they cornered the Legion by exploiting their fear of the serpent.

The Malpais Legate was impressed, as was Caesar. Though how impressed Caesar was didn't compare to how incensed he was that his mighty Legion had been repelled, no, _humiliated _by a tribe of children. The response had to be swift, decisive, and brutal. It had to make a statement. Any failure on the part of the Legion could not be allowed to stand, no matter how slight.

In truth the victory of the Dirty Hops had hardly been a victory at all. The legion lost perhaps fifty men, as they hadn't put much resources into subduing the tribe, underestimating a tribe of children. As few as twenty additional men may have turned the battle in the Legion's favor, despite the Dirty Hops unexpectedly smart tactics. It was the closest Caesar had ever come to defeat in the life of the Legion, though, so the response needed to be ten times greater. That was Caesar's logic. His logic told him that the only redress to this affront was to kill the serpent.

It wasn't known if the Dirty Hops worshiped the serpent, tolerated it, or were simply not strong enough to get rid of it, but it was assured that killing the beast would cow them into submission. As it turned out the Dirty Hops worshipped the serpent, feeding to it any Dirty Hop which had become 'too old,' but that hardly altered the plan.

The dead souls, more by merit of their nonconformity than their skill were on the front line of this operation. Their loss to the serpent would remove their slightly embarrassing position within the otherwise pure Legion, and so Mortuus Anima and his men were sent with the task of killing a snake so large it could swallow a man in a single gulp.

It killed three of his men, and every man in the contubernia supporting his. They fought with a full centuria, but it was obviously not going to be enough. The serpent was too big, too powerful, and a frontal assault wasn't going to be enough, no matter how many men they fed the beast. The Legate was more clever than that, even if only just.

The dead souls had been first into the hunting grounds of the serpent, howling and brandishing their weapons, the lust for blood driving them onwards with the fury of the Legion behind them. Though as the battle progressed they fell back, let more and more legionaries assault the serpent as they retreated. Yet the serpent followed them every step of the way. The Legate sent more and more men in yet they lost more and more ground. The battle began to turn, and it appeared that this would be the fall of the Legate.

It appeared this would be the Legate's last battle until a centurion, positioned above the serpent's hunting ground, fired an incinerator. The dead souls had been retreating, but had left behind them a trail of napalm. As the serpent had advanced it had covered itself in military-grade explosives. Before Mortuus turned tail and fled for his life he flung a full barrel into the serpent's maw.

The sky turned red. All were consumed, the earth, the sky, the serpent and the Legion. Every tribe for miles around fell in line. Mortuus always bore the mark on his back, where he was burned from the napalm he used to burn the serpent, the serpent and every other legionary that had fought alongside him.


	11. The New Tribe

The New Tribe

Julia shaved her head with a combat knife in preparation. She smiled at her reflection. She couldn't contain her giddiness, her glee burning two hot coals in her eyes. She grabbed another lock of hair.

"Hey, looking good," Marceline lurked in the doorway. Her fiendish grin mimicked Julia's. Julia only had half of her hair.

She had returned from the Followers triumphant, wiser about the world and with a glorious bounty of medical supplies and technology. The Goddess welcomed her with open arms, embracing her daughter with familial warmth. Ouroboros had changed very little in the time Julia was gone, and for that she was glad. The wasteland seemed to change every day, it was good that there was somewhere consistent, some place that would always be there for her. A rock in the ever shifting sands of the wastes.

She got to work on the auto-doc immediately, with help from Tiegan and Marceline. Her schematics were rough, and she didn't have all the parts necessary, but Tieg was a brilliant engineer, and in a little more than a month they had a functioning auto-doc set up in the pyramid of the Goddess.

The Goddess was delighted beyond measure. She spoke, "Julia, you are my best daughter, and my favorite." Julia blushed in spite of herself. "I want your help with something, something that I think will increase the strength of my Daughters tenfold."

Julia was expecting this. It was the reason she put so much effort into securing an auto-doc for the Daughters. It hadn't been a practical undertaking. There wasn't a medical procedure they couldn't perform without it, with the Goddess' knowledge and the supplies they accrued in tribute from tribes. The auto-doc had only one important specialty that they would be hard-pressed to perform without it. Cybernetics were a fairly new technology before the war, especially military-grade cybernetics. An auto-doc meant the Daughters would now have an additional edge over the other wastelanders, the tribals and the Canaanites and the Legion. It meant they would have an advantage over even a force like the NCR.

When she was finished shaving her head bald Julia took a controlled dose of med-x. "Just wait, this works- you're next," she waggled her eyebrows at Marce, "We are the future of the wasteland."

Julia was the test patient. If she survived the procedure, Hecate would begin performing it on other girls, until she had a powerful, cybernetically-augmented fighting-force. Julia was excited. She personally chose her augments, implants to make her stronger and smarter. To her it was not only a chance to become more powerful, it was another in a long line of refutations of the technophobic Legion.

The procedure was a success. The Goddess christened Julia the first Maenad, her wild woman, a terrifying single-person army. The first of many to come. Of course every other Maenad's initiation would be different. Their loyalty had to be proven. Their will and fortitude had to be tested. In the future it would be a ritual to make oneself ready for cybernetic augmentations. Julia only had a free pass as she proved her loyalty and fortitude by volunteering to be the first subject.

The surgery was not completely perfect. Augmentations along Julia's spine left thick scars, a trail of knotted flesh that Julia wore with pride. She was faster and stronger, she was smarter. She was a Maenad, an elite. Her scars were her tribal markings. Tribal markings of her new tribe.


	12. Savages

Savages

She saw him through The Lady's scope, saw him with his men slaughtering animals. This was the edge of northern Legion territory. Julia and her girls were on their way to reclaim Burham Springs from the gehenna, or at least plunder the mines. They were passing through Manti-La territory and that's where she saw him, on his Manti-La campaign.

Mortuus Anima was destroying Manti-La hunting grounds, killing the tribe with attrition. He gleefully massacred animals with his machete, a weapon he'd carried with him since childhood. He let the blood of the beasts spill on his clothes, covering himself in viscera. His smile was broad, he only truly found himself happy when he was killing. There was nothing careful or graceful about his killing, hacking at the beasts indiscriminately with his cherished weapon. When the beasts were dead he set upon the corpses, mangling them until no distinguishing marks remained. He towered proudly over their desecrated bodies. He made sure there was nothing left for the Manti-La.

It disgusted Julia. She was horrified at his savageness, his brutality. She lined him up in her sights, scrutinizing to make sure it was really him. There was no mistaking it. She considered killing him then and there. Amongst his men. She could picture it, him proudly surveying his savage exertions when suddenly and unexpectedly his head burst like overripe mutfruit. She couldn't stop picturing his face as it happened. The thought made her sick. She couldn't do it.

The Maenads had been on a campaign of terror for weeks, indiscriminately killing and maiming as they felt on their way to the Springs. Only rarely did their violence serve any purpose. Occasionally they slaughtered raiders for an ammo cache, or tortured tribals for food supplies, but more often than not they did because they could.

They killed because no one could stop them and it felt good. All their lives these girls had been intimidated by the wasteland, its size and scope, its dangers that lurked everywhere, omnipresent and terrifying in innumerable ways. It had all changed. They had changed. They were now the force best adapted to the wasteland. They were now big, the wasteland was now small. They towered over the wastes like giants and gleefully stepped on the ants (occasionally literally) simply because they could. Because they had spent a long time being scared by the ants, being scared by the thought of the ants. Now the ants were scared of them. They had the supplies, the ammo, the weapons, the armor, the strength and smarts and speed to fear no more.

Julia looked at her hands. Her gloves were stained with blood of all kinds. The faceplate of her helmet had a diagonal stripe of dried blood where an arterial spurt had splashed and she had left it there. She let the Dead Soul and his men leave, watched them walk away from their carnage triumphantly through the scope of her Anti-Material. The day would come when she would kill her kindred spirit. That day would not be today. The endless fires of Burham Springs beckoned.


	13. The Decanus

Mortuus Anima loved the Legion with all his heart. It would have been easy for him to simply enjoy what being a member of the Legion allowed him to do, would have been easy for him to just think like the animal he behaved like. He knew the Legion gave him the opportunity to fight, to test himself, to endlessly wage battle. Conflict defined him. The Legion gave purpose to his life. It gave him a reason to fight. It gave him direction, something to fight against, a greater good to fight for. Although on a certain level Mortuus was a simple beast, he was wise enough to know it was by the grace of Caesar that allowed him to act a simple beast. Every blow he delivered was empowered by the authority of Caesar's Legion. He was a weapon for the Legion, and he loved every minute of it.

He never questioned slaveholding. Every contubernia had at least one slave for every two legionaries, sometimes two slaves for every legionary. The slaves maintained weapons, carried supplies, cooked, established camps, and occasionally acted as distractions or cannon fodder in battle. A legionary's life was nothing but battle, the slaves handled everything else. It was perfect for Mortuus, and not unlike his life even before the Legion, which was a time so removed from his Legion life that he couldn't even remember the name of the tribe he had once belonged to. He never questioned the Legion's policy of slavery, because he felt he was a slave himself. He was a slave to life, to living. He was a slave to the needs of his body, a slave to the endless work of staying alive. A slave to his impulses, the demands of a living body and a living mind.

The Legion freed him from all that. He no longer had to be a person, someone who needed to provide food for himself, who needed to think about others, who needed to think at all. The Legion had freed him from the slavery of choice. He couldn't understand why anyone else would feel differently, why anyone else wouldn't consider their slavery freedom from a greater, all-consuming tyranny. He rounded up people to be chained and abused for this twisted notion of freedom he held, this concept that had been born in him from his ignorance both willing and unwitting.

He strode past the cage where they kept their slaves in triumph. He paraded like a hero for the men and women and children they kept chained with collars around their necks, kept corralled in a rusty chain-link fence. He was proud of his accomplishments in beating down these people, breaking them with his brutality. Beating them with his fists and his body- the only things he gave any credence to- beating them within an inch of their lives backed by the implicit endorsement of Caesar and the Legion. He ground the slaves down into the dirt and he did it with pride and satisfaction, knowing, absolutely knowing in his heart of hearts that he was right, that it was right, right right _right_.

He smiled happily but not warmly at the slaves. He lunged forward and rattled their cage, watching with satisfaction as they recoiled in horror. Suddenly and fiercely he slammed his head into the fence and snarled at the slaves. A woman began to cry, quietly. Mortuus chuckled dark and low, then quickly grew bored and wandered away.

He watched Reave run up to him. "Sir, someone's asking for the decanus," Reave reported, "A woman came up to the camp and asked to see you."

Mortuus couldn't conceive of a reason any woman would be brave and foolish enough to wander into a Legion camp unattended, but he saw no reason to not meet with her. He followed Reave and was stunned. He was taken aback by the woman standing amongst his men with slight apprehension but fierce determination.

She had changed. He hadn't expected that. All this time he had been searching for a girl, a little girl with tribal dreads and childish cares. She was taller, even though the coat she wore dwarfed her. Her hair was shorter, no longer dreaded and adorned with beads but trimmed to look like a man's hair. Her eyes, though, her eyes were unmistakeable. The eyes that were his own. He gasped with his deep, soft voice, "Arama."

"Hello, Heart," Julia greeted her estranged older brother. She hugged her coat tighter as he embraced her with filial warmth.


	14. Marked

Marked

The girl was never given a name, but her family was Aram and so she came to be known as Arama. She was the granddaughter of the tribe's leader, a severe man, carved out of granite and bearing a beak-like nose. Arama would always remember two moments with him. The first, when she was very young. He was teaching her brother to hunt, and she was there, too. Heart was clutching his machete timidly, fingering the blade and glancing worriedly from Arama to their grandfather. Their grandfather was getting frustrated at Heart, when suddenly he leaned in to whisper conspiratorially into Arama's ear, "I'm going to play a trick on your brother."

There was a twinkle in his eye as he stood back up. Arama would never forget the twinkle. Her grandpa then began to whoop and holler and dove into the brush. Heart's eyes exploded in fear. From the bush a baby gecko burst forth in a panic, straight at Heart. Instinctually he raised the machete that was almost as big as he was and brought it down on the baby gecko's skull, splitting it. He was about to cry when his grandfather followed the gecko out of the bush, and seeing his grandson's handiwork celebrated uproariously. He carried both his grandchildren home on his shoulders, beaming.

Arama's second memory of her grandfather was not so happy.

When she was eight years old Arama was marked. She was isolated from the tribe, for who she was, for who she could be. Her grandfather marked her as the future of the tribe. As a leader, as a teacher. Arama didn't care for it. She didn't like being marked. She didn't like the way it made her different. Different from the girls she grew up with, like Athena. Different from the boys she grew up with, like Heart. She didn't fit in with the boys of the tribe, even though everyone treated her like a boy, and she didn't fit in with the girls of the tribe, even though she was a girl. She was isolated from everyone. She was a freak who didn't fit anywhere. She began to act out.

When most of the tribe was shunning her Dark Mother took her in, cared for her in a way that the rest of the tribe didn't. Dark Mother was herself scorned, in a different way. She was the tribe's herbalist. She had a habit of staring far and away at nothing in particular, and being slow to answer. Arama discovered this mild autism was a result of her constant handling of drugs. Dark Mother was almost always high.

Arama took over almost all the duties of tribe herbalist, leaving Dark Mother tribe herbalist in name only. Upon being 'marked' Arama was given a mask which, when coupled with gloves, proved to be enough to avoid the stupefying effects of the tribal medicine. Dark Mother started to become more alert and aware for not having to handle healing powder all the time.

Being marked meant Arama was unfit for marriage, the fate of every other girl in the tribe when they reached puberty. As she watched her peers all paired up she grew jealous. She didn't want to be married off, obviously. In fact it disgusted her that these girls were being treated like livestock, paired off for breeding. But it didn't matter that she considered it misogynist, the idea that she was not allowed something enraged her. Just another way she had been treated like a pariah, like garbage by 'her' people.

Her revenge was ill-conceived. She seduced husbands away from their young brides, to prove to herself that she was just as worthy of marriage as any of her peers, and to make a mockery of the entire system. As it turned out, all she succeeded in doing was embarrassing herself and making many young brides miserable. Marriage was for life in the tribe, there was no divorce, there were no second marriages, and it was never the man's fault. If a young husband slept with Arama it wasn't his problem, it was his wife's problem, and she was treated with the scorn all wives who did not satisfy their husbands received. Arama grew disgusted with herself and everyone around her.

When she was sixteen she fled the tribe. In a month the Twisted Hairs were betrayed by the Legion, crushed and absorbed.


	15. Faceless Men

Faceless Men

When she was a child Athena loved being alone. It wasn't a good idea, it was a luxury she allowed herself. She prided herself on her ability to slip away from the eyes of supervision and hide in secluded places. To disappear. When she was gone everything bothering her was gone, too. As she hid from her parents and the tribe so too did she hide from her worries, her fears, her responsibilities and chores. Even as a child she had her share of responsibilities, as did all children of the tribe.

When she was alone, Athena didn't have to shovel brahmin shit. She didn't have to tan hides or sew clothing. She didn't have to do whatever her father told her to do, without question. When she was alone her father and mother didn't hit her. Her brothers didn't beat her up for fun. When she was alone she was never yelled at, choked, or picked up and thrown. She didn't have to clean. When she was alone, Athena could just be. Just exist. It was a time when she found peace.

The day it happened she didn't just escape. She fled. She was seven years old. She'd fucked up really bad. Brahmin had died, and she was certain when their deaths came to light she was next. It was the worst thing she'd ever done, and as she ran away she cried. She could feel the blows, feel her body break under the punishment she was sure to receive. She didn't intend to come back this time. She was gone for good, she knew it. If she came back she wouldn't be the same person. That Athena was dead. She was a new Athena, someone with a clean slate. Someone without a past. Her new life was just beginning. She was unaware of how correct she was to think that.

She thought she was alone, in the shelter of a rocky outcropping some two miles away from the tribe. Her feet hurt, so she sat down to rest. He crept up behind her, as she rubbed the soles of her feet he grabbed her. She bit his hand but he wouldn't let her scream. She kicked and thrashed, but the combination of her fatigue and his strength made it all for naught. He carried her back to his camp, a group of hard-looking men wearing football pads and carrying lawnmower blades fashioned into makeshift machetes. Faceless men, wearing bandanas and goggles. They were all filthy, covered in wasteland dust.

"What'd you bring us here, Cato?" one of the faceless men addressed the man carrying Athena in a growl. "Supper?"

"Maybe," Athena could feel the man's hot gravel voice on the back of her head. "She's tough. I'm thinking of giving her a collar."

"Chain her up?" the faceless man examined her. "Let's see her."

The man holding Athena tossed her to the ground, but before she could get up and run away she felt a boot come crashing down on her back. Whatever beating she had left home to avoid that day caught up with her and then some. She was beat into unconsciousness.

When she woke up it was dark. She had been stripped naked, only now around her neck was fastened a thick metal collar. It bit into her skin, too tight to put her finger between. Her whole body hurt. Her left eye was too swollen to look out of. She began to cry. She sobbed. She couldn't even tell where she was, all she knew was that it was cold, and hard.

A faint mechanical whirring came from the collar. She could feel it vibrate her esophagus. She clawed at it with her swollen and bruised hands. Her hands hurt. They were bloody. The tips of her fingers were raw.

"Hey, quit it in there!" she could barely hear. The origin of the voice rattled the chain-link fence she realized she was caged in. She screamed at the man, as loud as she could. "Hey, shut the fuck up!" She screamed more. She started hitting the collar. "Shut the fuck up before I shut you up!"

"Fuck you!" her voice was a strangled cry. The guard opened the cage door and entered the cage. Everything in Athena's body was screaming in pain, but she slipped between his legs and ran out.

She ran naked across the wasteland in pitch darkness, not knowing where she was going and in total pain. At a certain point a clicking noise started in her collar, only to stop abruptly accompanied by the cessation of the collar's mechanic hum and the smell of burnt plastic. She ran through the night, and when the sun came up she hid. She tried to sleep but found she couldn't. She hid and sobbed until she heard voices. She thought they were the faceless men searching for her, but it turned out to be a Twisted Hair raiding party, fresh from an assault on another tribe.

They recognized her instantly by her dreadlocks. The faceless men had tried to strip her of her tribal identity by taking her clothes, but they didn't realize all of her tribal markings were contained within the twists of her hair. She fell at the feet of her tribesmen sobbing and clutching the collar.

The raiding party brought her back to the tribe. Efforts were undertaken to free her from the collar, but they only succeeded in loosening it and damaging the metal, fusing it together so the collar couldn't be removed. She described the faceless men to the elders, who discussed the damage done to her with fear and awe. Unbeknownst to them, this was their first encounter with Caesar's Legion. It set the tone for every encounter proceeding, until the Legion wiped out the Twisted Hairs for good.


	16. The Future of the Tribe

The Future of the Tribe

Aram Heart, pride of the Twisted Hairs, grandson of the elder. His promise was astounding. It was no secret that Heart's grandfather was grooming him to someday lead the tribe. He was too young to join raiding parties, but he hunted, and quickly became the best hunter of the tribe when he was as young as eight years old. His kills were quick, clean. He never expended any energy that wasn't needed. Efficient to the point of cold.

Heart was never a smart boy, never nearly as smart as his sister, but he had his own intelligence. He never grew angry, he never judged. He perceived and he acted. He did everything with level-headed skill and grace. He didn't hesitate, he didn't reflect, he didn't regret. He traveled ever forward, never dwelling in the past or deliberating the present.

The Twisted Hairs didn't have good relations with their neighboring tribes. They waged war, they extorted, they threatened every other community. They grew strong at the expense of their neighbors, so when their neighbors fell to Caesar's Legion they were able to fight off Caesar's incursions into their land. They never engaged in any out-and-out battle, there was never any open warfare, but there were plenty of skirmishes which kept the Legion tide at bay.

The first envoy of peace that Caesar sent was threatened, beaten, and sent back to Caesar disgraced. The second envoy Caesar sent was accompanied by dozens of guards and hundreds of slaves, bearing gifts of coins, armor, and weaponry. Not just to entice the Twisted Hairs with the riches of the Legion but to make it very clear that any true march of the Legion might be repelled but at great cost to the Twisted Hairs.

His second envoy worked. The elders of the Twisted Hairs convened and decided to ally themselves with the Legion. They would work as scouts and representatives, be given weapons and armor, be treated as brothers to the Legion. There was only one condition, which gave the leader of the elders pause. If the Twisted Hairs were to join the Legion, they would have to give Caesar the grandson of the head elder. He was to become a legionary, as symbolic act of the Twisted Hair's and Legion's new alliance.

And so the young man once known as Aram Heart, brother of Arama and grandson of Harpy, came to be known as Mortuus Anima. The first thing the Legion did was give him that name, the second thing the Legion did was shave off his hair, his dreadlocks. He was ten years old, and would spend the rest of his life in the Legion, trained to be a conqueror, given control of his own contubernia and becoming the pride of his commanders. From Aram Heart to the Dead Soul.

After Aram Heart was taken away by the envoys of Caesar to begin his legionary training, one elder turned to another and said, "I believe we have just traded away the future of our tribe." Julia would later reflect on what an apt statement that had been.


	17. Smoke

Smoke

The Goddess had a vision. She blew out smoke, and it became a woman. The smoke-woman faced her, and each time the Goddess breathed out the smoke-woman became more solid, more real. It became a reflection of the Goddess, but without hair. The Goddess could feel herself fade away into the smoke-Goddess, as it became more real she evaporated to smoke. As the Goddess was almost completely gone the smoke-Goddess became a hideous monster with deep empty sockets for eyes and spines growing from its face. It screamed and evaporated back to smoke and the Goddess was alone in her chamber atop the pyramid again. The visions shook her, but she did not speak them to her Daughters, for fear they would worry.


	18. Brothers and Sisters Part 1

Brothers and Sisters Part 1

I. "Well you know me, I wouldn't kill anything if I didn't have to," he said. "Remember that month I wouldn't eat anything but snack cakes?"

They dined on grilled giant ant meat, not the finest but clearly the best he could get. She had to admit he had a way with food.

"You developed rad sickness and threw up a bunch," she nodded her head. He drank lustily from a bottle of soda.

"Yeah," his voice was deep, resonant like the low rumble of heavy thunder, but soft, "But, y'know, gotta kill to eat," he shrugged and took another ravenous bite of ant meat, "That's just the way things are."

Julia Aram stared at her brother, the Dead Soul. She found him surprisingly pure. Where other Legionaries bore battle scars with pride his skin was smooth and uncalloused. He was free of dirt and grime, appearing almost freshly washed. There was no indication of any past on him. Not the bloody battles of the Legion, not the vicious executions he'd committed, not the gleeful torture he'd engaged in. He looked as pure and innocent as a child. The accumulated weight of his transgressions against humanity were obscured by the curtain of memory, as Julia could not help but still see him as the little boy she'd grown up with. As the young boy afraid to kill a young gecko.

"I'm so glad I found you!" he said, "I never stopped looking. When I heard about Dry Wells I knew you couldn't have been there. I never gave up hope!"

He beamed a wide smile at her. She couldn't help smiling back.

Not that she felt threatened by him. She didn't feel threatened by anything anymore, certainly not the Legion. These children had a pathological revulsion towards armor and weaponry more complex than lawnmower blades jury rigged with handles. Their discipline, numbers, and zealotry gave them an edge to be sure, but it was an edge which was easily removed with a sniper rifle or a landmine. Their misogyny left them with a gaping blind spot when it came to women, notably. Their firm belief in the inferiority of women, their concept of women as nothing more than property made it that much easier for any competent woman to trick or manipulate them.

Julia had entered the Legion camp wearing none of her armor aside from her coat, she'd come without Lady and her shotgun, and yet she was still the most equipped soldier in the camp. On her person she'd concealed two .22 pistols, 6 .22 clips, her Colt Navy and full ammo belt, two snub-nosed colt magnums with full chambers, a Colt M1911 with three clips, a bowie knife, a butcher's cleaver, and a switchblade. In comparison her brother was totally unarmed, with a kit of weapons containing brass knuckles, his Twisted Hair machete, and boxing tape in his tent. She had personally noted the weapons of everyone in the camp, including slaves, one of which had concealed a crude metal shiv on their body. If it came down to it she could kill every other person at the Legion camp her brother staffed, including him and the slaves, with her armory even in its diminished capacity, even without the force of her Maenads who were concealed in the surrounding hillside against her orders. Avata was personally clutching Julia's helmet, ready to give it back to her captain at a moments notice.

II. She shared a tent with her brother. She was surprised to find it the same as every other tent in camp. In her not-insignificant experience with the Legion she had learned that commanders were eager and waiting to pull rank. A strict and fanatical devotion to the hierarchy in the Legion led to fetishizing authority, and Decanus and Centurions all had their own way of expressing their rank. Centurions in particular took advantage of their positions by ownership of their own contubernias of private slaves. The character of these slave contubernias was often a reflection of the Centurion's character; for instance the 'lovers' and the rapists would often have a formation of women slaves of all ages, whereas the secretly homosexual Centurions would surround themselves with male 'personal groomers.' Decanus couldn't afford the luxury of extra slaves, so they usually expressed their position with better equipment, including larger tents. Her brother did wear better equipment, but it was also fragrantly in violation of Legion dress code. The scorn, disrespect, and demerits his armor likely cost him would certainly outweigh any tactile benefits. His ancestral machete was unique but had no true advantage over lawnmower blades. Her brother Heart was a surprisingly humble commander.

They slept with their clothes on. When she was closer Julia could tell by the smell her brother hadn't taken his clothes off in a long time. She was wearing her coat, which smelled reassuringly of herself and gunmetal, but under her coat she was wearing shorts and an undershirt she'd taken from a dead woman. They smelled disconcertingly unlike Julia. She spent the entire night either overwhelmed by the stench of her brother's leather or unnerved by the unfamiliar smell of her own clothes.

She fell asleep at some point, and awoke after her brother, much later than her usual 5am wake-up time. She woke after sunrise, to the sound of her brother sharpening his machete. He crouched hunched over, the brim of his stetson pulled low over his eyes. He was too absorbed in the act of sharpening to notice her, but when she rested her hand on his shoulder he fell back on his butt and smiled at her, like a child playing in the dirt.

"What do you want to do today?" he asked.

"I get a choice?" she was surprised, "Don't you have Legion stuff to do? Drills, and... patrols?"

"We don't patrol. We're scouting. They're scouting," he gestured to his men, "I can scout with my sister."

Dead Soul's scouting with his sister turned out to be more like a vigorous and fun hike. Julia was surprised at how much fun she was having just crawling around rock formations with her brother. He occasionally would stop, pointing out interesting plants or landmarks on the horizon, and Julia played along, acting like she didn't know that a certain plant could be ground into a salve, or what the scorch marks of laser weaponry looked like on stone. She nodded along dumbly, humoring him. He was so proud, showing off his knowledge to his little sister. She couldn't help feeling proud of him, too. He was so confident, so at ease in hostile terrain.

He was curiously unarmed the entire day, opting to leave his machete back at camp. She assumed it was because the territory they traversed was already charted by her brother's men. They never encountered any threats. Nothing spoiled the perfect day for Julia. At least, not until she got back to camp.

Her brother had to convene with his unofficial second-in-command about the day's scouting report, leaving her alone at his tent. She was sitting there when she was approached from behind by one of the contubernia's ghouls, Scratch. She heard his unsteady gait, his bare feet slapping the ground as he made no attempt to disguise his approach. He breathed at a low rasp, sniggering at her back.

"You know nobody's bothering you because the Decanus is your brother," he said, "If I touched you he'd tear my face off. What little face there is to be torn off." She continued to ignore his presence. He breathed heavier, sucking his few remaining teeth and sniggering more.

"Nobody crosses Mortuus. But we'll be meeting up with the rest of the centuria soon," he continued telling her back, "Mortuus may be tough, but he's subject to the command of the Centurion," he smiled so wide she could feel it without looking at him, "And I'm sure the Centurion will be interested in you, little profligate."

He walked off laughing a choking, sputtering hack of a laugh. Julia mentally tallied up her equipment again, and used her knowledge of ghoul biology to determine the quickest way to kill Scratch, and then the most satisfying way. When her brother finished talking to Reave he returned to her, and noting her expression asked what was on her mind.

"Just thinking about datura root," she smiled at him, "Just thinking about today."


	19. Brothers and Sisters Part 2

Julia stayed with her brother for a few more days. Being with him was surprisingly pleasant. They just spent time together, most of the time not even speaking, just enjoying each other's company. Every morning they'd make a point of watching the sunrise together. Just him and her, watching the horizon for a good hour and a half, not talking. What did they have to say to each other? What could they say to each other? Perhaps in a better world they could have compared scars, talked strategy, boasted of great victories. In a perfect world they might have been able to laugh at how similar they'd turned out. Both tough and strong and dominant.

It was not a perfect world, though. It was the world of the Legion. In the Legion's world women weren't allowed to be strong and dominant. Even if her brother didn't treat her like property like he'd been taught she was still expected to be docile and subservient. They followed his schedule, ate what he wanted to eat, slept when he slept. When he convened with Reave she had to sit someplace else and wait patiently for her brother to return. When they went out on the attack she was expected to stay behind and wait.

Julia played along for the most part, willing to play the role of servile maiden for awhile to spend time with her brother, but if no-one was actually watching her she wasn't just going to sit on her hands. She spied on the contubernia's strategy meetings, and when she found out that they were planning an attack against a small group of wastelanders they'd scouted she had to see.

She slipped away from the camp after the Dead Souls had begun their march, and she made it to the location of the wastelanders before they did. She discovered the coordinates given to her brother led to a small ruin, the calcified skeleton of a gas station or maybe the shadow of a country home. It was occupied by a small group, three men and two women. They made no effort to conceal their location, building a campfire out of garbage that left thick black smoke that could be seen for miles around. They had dressed a fresh gecko kill, it's corpse still splayed open on the rocks behind them. They looked to most likely be raiders, at best mercenaries. They wore scraps as armor, leather and twisted metal, gathered and claimed at such different times and from such different sources they had no uniform amongst their own bodies much less their companions. A hardened bunch to be sure, but no more hardened than any other wastelander, and much softer than any of the Legionaries serving under her brother.

The wastelanders anticipated the arrival of the Dead Souls, weapons drawn at the first sign of company. The Dead Souls made no effort to mask their approach, but surprisingly were not approaching with weapons drawn. In fact, after some tense words with a legionary Julia couldn't quite see the men and women lowered their weapons (which ranged from a military pistol to a sharpened stick) and let the Legion approach.

She saw Heart walk towards the apparent leader of the wastelanders, a man wearing a faded baseball cap haloed with barbed wire. Her brother was easily a foot taller than the man in the hat, had nearly twice as much muscle mass, but that was just her brother. He was at least a half-foot taller than his tallest man, taller than most Centurions. If any man in the Legion resembled its bull standard that man was Mortuus Anima. His face was in shadow, the flickering caress of the trash-fire's light alighting only upon his broad chest. Julia couldn't even tell if her brother was armed. Silently his legionaries circled the small party of wastelanders.

In short order the women and the men save the man in the hat were subdued, tackled to the ground by the Dead Souls. The decanus disarmed the man in the hat, batting aside the brandished pistol. He raised his fists to fight the man in the hat, who looked Mortuus over once and decided to turn tail and run. Scratch, the ghoul who harassed her before, sprang out of the darkness, smacking the man in the face with his ropey, emaciated ghoul strength. The man in the hat fell onto has back, his hat flying off his head and coming to rest at Mortuus's feet.

As her brother picked the man up by his shirt and threw him into the fire face-first, Julia once again witnessed a sort of brutality and cruelty that seemed foreign in her brother, only now realizing that the person she saw as her brother existed entirely in her own perception. This was not Aram Heart, she knew now. That person she had known, that child named Aram Heart had been left behind more than a decade ago. This was Mortuus Anima, the Decanus. This was the dead soul, a man whose face now lit by scattered fires was clearly smiling, enjoying himself as he tore a man apart with his bare hands.

Julia had to recalculate. Her capacity to kill the entire Legion squad had been based on a misconception that her brother was always unarmed. She realized as she witnessed him break a man's face unsparingly with his bare fist, then proceed to kill two other men in a similar fashion, that her brother had to always be considered armed, and considerably armed at that. She didn't think she could take her brother in close combat even with her best pistol, much less while flanked by his men. He wasn't necessarily fast, but he was tough, to the point that even when one of his combatants revealed a hidden switchblade and sliced his arm he didn't even flinch. That was the second fight and he killed the third fighter without bandaging his arm. It was unlikely he was on any medication, as per Legion law, and she hadn't seen him take any steroids or numbing agent in their time together. He was just iron-forged.

Her security at the Legion camp was compromised, although she was fairly certain any harm to befall her person would be responded to with excessive force by her girls. She had stopped noticing them in the hills but it was unlikely they had left. In any case if she couldn't do it herself she didn't want it done. She began making plans for her escape.


	20. Brothers and Sisters Part 3

***TRIGGER WARNING***

The Legionaries brought the wastelander women back with them to camp. They bound their feet and carried them on their shoulders. One of the women, the larger blonde one, wouldn't stop shouting obscenities at them until Reave punched her in the eye. The smaller brunette could only watch the Legionaries march in quiet horror. It was morning when they made it back to camp. Julia had already managed to fall asleep, although she hadn't slept for long before her brother came back to the tent. He smelled overwhelmingly of blood and dirt, and he fell onto his bedroll in a dead sleep.

She awoke promptly before sunrise. Her brother was still asleep. She got up and inspected the camp. The women they'd captured the night before were being kept separate from the slaves, captures not yet broken. They had been fitted with explosive collars even though they were bound completely, chained to a large boulder. When Julia awoke they had just fallen asleep of exhaustion, the brunette resting her head on the blonde's shoulder.

Julia didn't have any special compassion for the women, noting the polka-dot track marks on their arms, their sunken eye sockets, the greasy sheen around their lips that came from habitual jet huffing. The signs of drug abuse. She was sorry they had been captured by the Legion, certainly. Nobody deserved to be made slave to the Legion, not even junkie raiders. But Julia had danced with the Legion many more times than these women, had been in much more vulnerable situations and not only had she avoided capture but had handily come out on top of every encounter. She pitied these women the Dead Souls had captured, to be sure. She pitied their weakness and stupidity.

Her policy was usually to free captures, if it was convenient. She didn't bother with the slaves. Slaves were already broken, they weren't made to wear collars and most of the time they were capable of leaving on their own. They just didn't know how to be free anymore.

Julia had never seen a capture broken before, but she had seen the aftermath time and time again. Legion slaves ceased to be people, ceased to be autonomous creatures and ceded all identity to their owners. Julia imagined it took a lot of evil to destroy someone so completely, to annihilate a consciousness so thoroughly. The time it took to break people into shells was so great and the people so numerous the consolidating of slaves had considerably slowed the Legion's progress across the southwest. The Legion would be able to reach the west coast in a year if every new conquest didn't necessitate the breaking of a new batch of slaves. Julia didn't really want to see what breaking a capture looked was like, but she couldn't free these women for fear of blowing her cover.

She waited for her brother to wake, which he did a few hours later. He awoke with a broad grin on his face, an undisturbed and untroubled sleep behind him. He was quite clearly proud of himself for having killed three men the night previous, although he did not bring it up to his sister. He ate a lot for breakfast, mantis eggs and freeze-dried apples. When he was finished with breakfast he did inspection, looking over his men from toe to tip, informally chiding them for breeches of uniform. He was in good spirits, awaiting the arrival of the centurion and the rest of the centuria. They were expected in two days time. Today, though, they were going to begin breaking the captures. Mortuus discussed with Reave how to do it.

"We could just keep 'em tied to the rock," Reave said, but Mortuus waved his suggestion away.

"No, no good. I say we get the poles," Mortuus was well-versed in the breaking of captures, and had learned in his own way to really make it potent. He'd studied under the Legate, after all, and no man was more skilled at breaking captures than the Malpais.

They got the slaves to set up the poles, spacing them out about three and half feet apart and pounding them into the ground with sledgehammers. The poles themselves were roughly six feet high, necessitating the use of a ladder to pound them into the ground. All throughout the day the sound of the sledgehammer rang through the camp. _Ting_, it hit metal. _Ting_, it struck again. Like the uniform ticking of a clock it rang, _ting,_ as the metal was driven deeper into the earth.

Every strike chimed an omen of doom, a countdown to Julia knew not exactly what but she dreaded it like the chiming of the metal, _ting_, signaled her own death.

The slaves finished pounding the four metal poles, _ting_, into the ground at dusk. _Tingggg,_ the final blow heralded doom, and the dispositions of all the women in the camp reflected as such. The captures grew more desperate with each blow of the hammer, whispering frantically to each other and even begging to be released, pleading and crying. Julia grew more ashen and withdrawn as the slaves worked, playing with her coat to keep herself occupied and grasping each of her weapons to reassure herself. The reactions of the slave women of the camp, who were the majority of slaves, were by far the most troubling. The slave women had not once expressed a single emotion since Julia arrived in camp, eternally grim-faced and downcast. They never talked amongst themselves in any way Julia could see, yet now they were exchanging glances, grouping together and watching the captures, sizing them up. Julia chillingly realized they were not deciding how the new captures would react to the breaking process, but whether the two women would survive at all. Surprisingly it seemed the blonde, the louder and bolder of the two, was not given good odds.

The Legionaries all shared looks of carnal jubilation at the prospect of breaking new captures. As the day wore on the ghoul Scratch even began to salivate, as a hungry dog might. They all licked their lips at every _ting_ of the hammer.

Julia was not specifically banned from observing the breaking of new captures, but she was not invited either. It seemed to her she was just expected to be there, that she would want to be there to watch whatever they did to the two women. She decided to observe discreetly, so as not to betray her true feelings about the matter unconsciously, and in the likely event that she would rather leave.

They unchained the women from the rock. They were weak from not eating or drinking the whole day, and they were starting to get withdrawals. They tried to fight back even still, but they were forced to the ground, three men to hold them down each. They cut the women's clothes off with a knife, lasciviously groping at their bodies. The blonde defiantly cursed the Dead Souls, but both were soon totally naked.

Their arms and legs were bound with leather belts to the metal poles, stretching them like animal skins between the rods, leaving them exposed and vulnerable. The Dead Souls withdrew, forming a semi-circle around them. The slaves completed the circle, so that the women were surrounded. The captures stood naked and humiliated, the blonde screaming insults and foaming at the mouth while the brunette simply hung her head in shame, desperately trying to deny her reality.

Julia heard the heavy footfalls of her brother as he approached the circle. He stood looking from woman to woman before approaching the spitting and screaming blonde. She spat on his chest and called him a faggot, to which he yanked her head back by her hair and hissed something Julia couldn't hear in her face.

"_Junkie_ _whore_," Mortuus Anima called the woman through clenched teeth. She winced in pain. Her hair pulled free in Mortuus' grasp. A sign of malnutrition, not that he cared. He unbuckled his belt with one hand, letting his pants fall around his ankles. He stared directly into the woman's eyes, relished her horror as he grasped his member and thrust it upwards inside of her body. She shrieked.

Julia looked away at the first thrust, unable to watch. She felt nauseous. She retreated away and threw up.

The blonde continued to shriek as the Dead Souls hooted and hollered, laughing as Mortuus raped her. Julia couldn't watch anymore but she could tell by hearing that once finished with the blonde her brother started raping the brunette while one of his men without pause started to rape the blonde. She shrieked until she was completely hoarse, while the brunette was mostly silent through all eight assaults. Occasionally she burst into a jagged sob. The Legionaries laughed and reveled, taunting the women and sometimes beating them about the face and chest. Julia silently cried the entire time, hugging herself and wishing she were anywhere else but she couldn't move.

The very worst thing she'd ever seen a Legionary do had been done by her own brother.

Each man had his way with the women, ending with the ghouls. When they were finished they left the women there, naked and bruised, bodies soiled by ejaculate. They were left splayed out, unable to fall to the ground for the bonds holding their arms up. Julia watched them once it was over. The blonde was completely catatonic, the brunette continued to sob and weep over her own broken body. The slaves wetted the women's brows, pouring some water into their mouths possibly out of pity, although more likely as commanded given the ritual, practiced way the rapes had commenced.

"You missed the breaking today," Mortuus told his sister when she finally returned to the tent.

"Oh," Julia said. "It's over?" she asked him, totally numb.

"Ah, naaah. We just did the first tonight. We're leaving 'em out for the centuria," Mortuus grinned. He was pleased to welcome his commander with captures to break. He knew it would earn him commendation.

After her brother fell asleep, Julia slipped out of the tent and made her way to the captures. The blonde was still in paralyzed shock, but the brunette was completely dehydrated from crying and looked at Julia mournfully as she approached. She said nothing and her gaze soon fell. She slumped over as much as she was able.

"What are your names," Julia whispered to her. The brunette stared at Julia in wearied contemplation, as though she had forgotten her own name already.

"My name is Rose," she said in a cracked whisper. She gestured to her companion, "Her name is Hope."

Julia stayed with Rose for awhile, cradling her broken body and resting her forehead on Rose's forehead, Julia weeping the tears Rose no longer could. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she whispered to Rose again and again, stroking her hair and rocking back and forth gently.

Julia wiped away her tears, letting Rose go to slump over defeated again.

"Rose, I want you to know, the Goddess watches over you always," Julia whispered in her ear, quietly giving her an overdose of Med-X while stroking her face. She then apologized to Hope, stroking her blonde hair and giving her an apologetic kiss on the forehead. "The Goddess watches over you, Hope," she said, giving her too a lethal dose of pain killer. Soon Hope and Rose fell asleep and quietly died. Julia wept silently over their lifeless shells, still unable by the bonds of the Legion's leather to fall to the ground.


	21. The Might of God

The Might of God

Sometimes medicine just wasn't enough. Congenital heart defects, deformities, chromosome imbalances, these could not be handled with a proper mixture of herbs. Of every two children Athena 'delivered' one would die within its first seven years of life. Of the ones that remained they required constant attention. Perhaps sensing the looming presence of death which haunted their children, mothers began to starve themselves refusing to leave their supposed children's sides. The tribe was choking and sputtering on their dead children and they begged Athena for reassurance. Asked her to speak to the Goddess, asked the Goddess for mercy, for support.

Athena had no reassurances, no blessings from the Goddess. She had grown bitter. Once again she was receding into herself, pulling away from her tribe. She had conquered the tribe at nineteen years old. They feared her, they revered her, and they were beneath her. They were not her equals. After being a Daughter so long Athena was beginning to find tribal life perverse, even. She saw them born into poverty and ignorance, she saw them die in poverty and ignorance. She had spent a decade with the tribe, she had seen an entire generation grow up, and the generation to proceed them die slowly and tragically.

When she had first come to the Crazy Horns the tribal elders were roughly thirty years of age, the oldest member of the tribe being nearly in her forties. It hadn't been strange to her that these people were relying on her, a teenager. Most of the tribe were teenaged, as most of the Twisted Hairs had been teenaged her whole life. Surviving past your twenties was the exception, not the norm in tribal life. If the elders didn't listen to what teenagers told them they wouldn't hear anything.

Things had changed for the Crazy Horns by Athena's involvement, though. Her medical knowledge had noticeably lengthened the lifespan of the Crazy Horns, even while she was secretly undermining their next generation. The combination had left the average age of the tribe roughly corresponding to her own.

Things hadn't really changed, though. They continued to age but grew no noticeably wiser, no smarter. The tribe was eking out a subsistence living without innovation for years before Athena arrived, and in the ten years she'd led them they'd lived out a subsistence living without innovation for ten years longer.

She was ready to move on. The tribe was not. She wanted bigger and better things but the tribe was stagnating. The elders, now much older than their ancestors had ever been, still deferred to her judgement in all matters, in matter of fact had come to demand it. When she had arrived she accepted and was somewhat pleased to find she was more educated than people twenty years her elders, but now having a band of forty-year-olds simpering and bowing to her left her feeling disgusted and repulsed. She withdrew from the Crazy Horns, made herself much less accessible and much more distant. Her reticence only made the tribe more desperate to rely on her, more fearful of her departure.

Children started dying, dying in ways the Crazy Horns couldn't understand. There had never been a child with trisomy 21 or leukemia before, or certainly not at the rates that were occurring now. They needed Athena's knowledge and reassurance. They needed her most and she was pulling away. The Crazy Horns were desperate.

They turned to the New Canaanites. With nowhere else to go and a cabal of mourning mothers pushing them the elders re-established contact with the New Canaanites, who welcomed them back like nothing had happened. A small group of elders met the Canaanites in secret inside a pre-war church the Canaanites had restored near the tribal village.

The Crazy Horns were terrified. Elder Ramshead trembled. He wouldn't look at the New Canaanites, instead throwing glances all around the room, looking out windows and flinching from the sky, fearing somehow that Athena's power was so immense she would tear the roof off the church herself, and crush them all like bugs under her heel.

Jeremiah Rigdon asked Ramshead what was wrong.

"The Daughters own to much, capital Rigdon. They kentnis none should. The capital Athena won't just mortimus here, she'll nuke the land," Ramshead sobbed.

"You've made a covenant with darkness. You have allied yourselves with the beast, this demon known as the 'goddess.' She has turned you away from the light of God. But the goddess has no power against the Godly, as the beast has no power against the might of God. You are safe here," Jeremiah's booming voice filled the church, his confidence giving his words the weight to calm the elders of the Crazy Horns.

Jeremiah made the elders to pledge loyalty to god and Joseph Smith in order to help them. They baptized them all there in the church according to secret Latter Day Saints Tradition, a ritual so austere and sacred the elders had no choice but to submit themselves body and soul to Jeremiah Rigdon and the Mormon church. As they were submerged underwater in the basin above the brass bulls, the blight of their worries was washed away. They were filled with the cleansing light of god.

"God is mighty, and He will triumph over the seducer," Jeremiah assured them, "We will carry out God's will and cast her out like the whore she is with muscle and steel."

Tribesman Too Much secretly ushered the elders back to the village. He witnessed their transformation, from cowering slaves to defiant elders, people ready to retake their lives. He also couldn't help but note the markings of Canaan they had brought back on their bodies. He wondered if they had not traded one master for another.


	22. Atia, Queen of The Legion

**Atia, Queen of The Legion**

Atia had been a slave, a personal consort to the Centurion Aurelius of Phoenix. Aurelius suffered some slight defeat, just a breach of conduct, merely some personal shame that did not reflect on the Legion as a whole. His record was previously spotless, and his offense private, so he was allowed to live, but as punishment Caesar stripped him of his personal slaves, and to humiliate him released them from their bondage.

They were numbering six, mostly girls, long since broken by the Legion. They had suffered monstrous indignities for the sake of what little comfort the Legion provided and now they were without even that. Five of them, left alone in the wasteland having long forgotten how to survive, died quickly. Atia was different, however. She was not the oldest nor the youngest. She was not the smartest or the strongest. She wasn't toughest or meanest, but unlike her doomed companions she was pregnant. The child was possibly the Centurion's, possibly not. He had allowed favored guests the full 'use' of her and her companions, and she in quiet rebellion had fornicated with any Legionary she could behind his back. She didn't know who the father was but she wasn't going to let her child die.

In a month death seemed certain, though. She was out of food. She was out of water. She didn't know where she was. She was delirious and unarmed. Her feet were swelling up and her back was shuddering in painful spasms. She could go no further and collapsed on the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust in a ring around her body. She breathed the breath she assumed to be her last.

She assumed death felt like a cool splash of water but it turned out to instead actually be a cool splash of water. Someone was pouring water on her, clean water. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd collapsed.

Julia poured a bottle of purified water on the pregnant woman's face. Her eyelids fluttered and she looked up at Julia, with either an expression of gratitude or resentment. Julia crouched over her prone form, examining her. She was very thin, clearly malnourished. Also dehydrated. Her skin was very red, likely a sunburn. She also likely had heatstroke. She was about seven months pregnant, maybe only six. She was showing but it was exaggerated by her malnourishment. Her clothes were simple, a thin synthetic polyester dress tied to her body by a leather belt. She was pretty, in a thin-lipped aristocratic way. The ghost of her luxurious platinum-blonde hair still clung to her head. She had been sheltered, whoever she was.

"You need to eat something," Julia told her, handing her a bit of grilled toad meat, "Not too much."

Atia took the meat and ate it, in small bites. The woman in the giant coat gave her some more water, urging her to drink slowly. The food and the water hurt to swallow but she was so hungry she didn't care. "Who are you?" Atia asked the woman helping her.

Julia didn't know how to respond. She still wasn't sure exactly how much she was going to help this woman, how much she wanted this stranger to know. She sighed and sat down. "My name is Julia. And you?"

Atia sat up, supporting herself on quaking arms. "I am Atia, consort to Aurelius of Phoenix, mother of his child," she announced with regal authority, "Or, uh, I was," she admitted. Her arms gave way and she laid down on the dirt again, much more gently this time. Julia couldn't help but think she was pretty conceited for a nearly-dead former sex slave.

She stayed with Atia for hours, nursing her back to health. They talked when Atia was strong enough and when she wasn't Julia just sat with her, rubbing her back absentmindedly. Atia told Julia about her old tribe, about their defeat by Caesar, about her imprisonment. Her tribe was conquered when she was ten years old. That was sixteen years ago.

"At first they made me do functionary work, because I can read and write. That wasn't so bad, I didn't have to lift stuff, I just had to write and, like, organize files," Atia could sit up by her own power now, "I got beat up all the time, obviously. But I was treated way better than other slaves. I had an important job, I was the record-keeper. I was smarter and more valuable than most of the Legion. I was in charge of the beating heart of the Legion!" she grew excited, waving her arms. Julia asked her to drink some more water.

"Troop movements, surveillance records, codes for runners, quartermaster supplies," Atia ticked each off on her fingers, "I had access to all of it. I knew who was doing what where and when in the entire Legion. I wasn't in the nerve center, I was the nerve center."

"And then I got pretty," she hissed, "I was... sixteen. I was still working as record-keeper. I was practically second to Caesar himself! I had Centurions and Decanus and Praetorians trading me favors for favors, for better assignments and better gear. I was living well, better than I had it in the tribe. I was Atia, Queen of the Legionaries!"

"But you grew to be attractive," Julia tried to distract her from the 'glory' of her old life. Like many other consort and 'hairdresser' slaves Atia had apparently been broken by luxury, promised an 'easy' life in exchange for her autonomy and identity. A much more insidious way to break a slave than simple abuse.

"How was I supposed to know to hide my body? To disguise my appearance, so I wouldn't be... I wouldn't be..." Atia trailed off. Julia gave her a reassuring embrace, told her she was safe now. Atia's pride wouldn't let her cry but tears collected in the corners of her eyes. She felt her stomach, felt the life inside her. She added, voice full of bitterness and regret, "They took away my eyeglasses."

"I think I have just the place for you," Julia told her. They were only a few days from Ouroboros. Julia supported Atia most of the way there.


	23. Concern Poker

Concern Poker

Julia's team beat her to Ouroboros by a week and a half, unaware that she had been slowed down by a very pregnant companion. They had marched double time the whole way, without stopping, for two whole days. Once they arrived they had to just wait around for their captain to return, nervously telling the Goddess that Julia had dismissed them all and told them to meet her back at Ouroboros. They were following orders.

After a week went by of following orders Avata was at her wit's end with worry, but the team tracker, Bella, wisely advised her that Julia could hold her own, and she would be embarrassed if they went out to find her.

"If you rode out into the wastes to 'rescue' me because I was gone for a week, Avi, I'd kill you," Bella said, then added, "And Jules is much prouder than I am."

So Julia's girls all sat on their hands and sweat bullets; after Avata's embarrassing outburst none of them were willing to admit their concern for the captain, fearing a display of doubt in their leader would make them all look weak or undermine the captain's authority. It was a game Julia's girls all played amongst themselves, a sort of poker where all their faces betrayed nothing but confidence and their cards all held nothing but doubt. Julia didn't know it but in this game of one-uping poker she'd gone all-in.

Avata had already lost. The game had precipitated with her loss of the game. Without a loser there could be no winners. Gillian, Marceline, Tiegan, and Bella all put on their faces for four days, made it very clear they had absolute faith in their captain's ability to survive in the wasteland with little to no supplies, that whatever was delaying her return was not difficulty but distraction, idle games she was playing. Julia's arrival assured her the pot, she was the only winner of this game she didn't know she was playing, everyone else was just playing not to lose.

So they went about their days idly. Tiegan worked non-stop in the machine shop, re-coding the Daughter's robots to be more efficient. The Goddess had expressly established the Daughter's robot division specifically to counter Caesar's technophobia. Julia's Maenads had been dispatched to the Burning Springs with orders to pillage and plunder, returning with a generous bounty of robots without any programming practical to the Daughter's needs. A coalition of mining robots equipped with thick armor and rock-cutting lasers and with absolutely no concept of a reality outside of the Springs. Tiegan was busy.

The other girls were not so lucky. Gillian continued to work as a medic, acting as a nurse to the Daughters, but she just ended up supporting the phalanx of medical robots the Goddess already deployed. She did not appreciate playing second-fiddle to a Mr. Orderly.

Bella and Marceline busied themselves with patrol duty, but because of strict orders to not raise any suspicion they couldn't kill anything, and were forced to simply sit and watch the Legion make camp not six hundred yards from Ouroboros (give or take a few rock formations). Bella grew so bored she lured a bunch of giant desert frogs to the Legion camp but they mostly just killed slaves. In any case it was enough to get the Legion to leave, but she was chastised for inspiring curiosity.

Avata, having already lost the little bluffing game the other girls were engaged in was free to express herself fully, able to voice her concern and wait for Julia at the gate. For four days she sat and worried, worried and sat and occasionally drank a bit. She had no busywork to distract her but she was the only one who didn't feel the need to be distracted. The other girls would visit her periodically and tease her, secretly jealous that they too could not sit with her and wait for their captain.

Bella saw her first, rather than Avata, but that had always been her and Marcie's secret plan. They patrolled every day but patrolled most heavily where Julia would make her approach. So it came that Bella was the first to see the captain come back, the first to meet the captain's new guest.

"Did you miss me?" Julia asked her as she shifted Atia over to Marcie's shoulders.

"Not at all captain," Bella smiled.


	24. Twisted Up

Twisted Up

Word spread quickly of Julia's return. As they followed the path up to Ouroboros they were joined by other Daughters, girls of all ages and stripes. Atia was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of women greeting her and Julia. It was unlike anything she had ever seen before. In the Legion and even in her tribe women had never been allowed to congregate without the supervision of men, although in the Legion perhaps there had been as diverse a collection of women, as the Daughters much like the Legion seemed to be made up of people from all different tribes.

There were Daughters with intricate facial tattoos, Daughters wearing elaborate headdresses, Daughters with unusual piercings. A woman Julia called Two-Spear had nails stuck through her nose, eyebrows, and ears. There was no uniform, although everyone appeared to be dressed very, very well. Not just compared to her own sad rags, which she had been taught again and again were the clothes of a slave, but even compared to the finery of the Centurions. All of these women were wearing clothes and armor nicer and better taken care of than anything in the Legion. Every Daughter of Hecate they met on the short trip back to Ouroboros was clean, healthy, and happy. They were all beautiful, all smiling. They all loved Julia.

Atia couldn't remember the last time she'd smiled.

Julia didn't have much time to bask in the Daughter's adoration, she barely had time to be welcomed back by her own team. She had been absent for more than two weeks and she needed to check in with the Goddess. She left Atia with Gillian and the Mr. Orderly's and entered the Goddess's ziggurat.

She found The Goddess Hecate in the central atrium, a massive room surrounded by columns and the gallery where the Daughters gathered to make decisions and hear proposals. Rather than taking her usual place in the highest and grandest chair of the gallery, Hecate was instead sitting on the floor of the atrium, in the center of the circle designed into the atrium's floor.

"Siddown, michoo, mi bellichoo. Mama darcanno two altheways," the Goddess spoke to Julia in the Twisted Hair's tribal language. Julia was always caught off-guard by this familiarity the Goddess shared with her, even though she remembered the Goddess from before she was Hecate, when they were Twisted Hairs together.

"Marra you too, mother," she said. The Goddess was an interesting beauty. She had dreadlocks that fell to her feet, her proud reminder of her history as a Twisted Hair. The way she was sitting on the floor her dreadlocks obscured her body entirely. She kept incense in the dreads, the cloud of smoke they created combined with the concealing effects of her hair contributed to her aura of mystery and power. Although she was actually rather small sitting on the floor her fire filled the entire room.

"I'mmaheard two ademist altheways them gehennas aldown the Springsway, michoo," the first order of business was a report on Burham Springs, even if it was discussed informally.

"You herddittall, mama, lest anyways iunno twoan ademisathingilikke gehennas, thingslike ant vida, y'kno. Ifigirs somits like ademisen' asee, guessin gehennas got nervis somewhere bee," although she spoke it very rarely after she had left the tribe, Julia slipped naturally back into the lyrical and poetic language of her former people. She was surprised at how quickly the words came out of her mouth, and reminded herself most of the Twisted Hair language was derivative of english, which is why it had been so easy for the Twisted Hairs to communicate with Caesar's Legion so many years ago.

They continued to talk undisturbed in their tribal prose for awhile longer, discussing the events of Burham Springs and the plunder Julia's maenads had gathered from its mines. The Goddess pressed Julia on her extended absence, and scolded her for making her girls worry.

"Avata like a dog wayout for the gate, sidindown esperran poortwo," she chided.

"Altheways twisdedup, mama," Julia apologized, "My arrival was slowed by a companion."

The Goddess asked her to elaborate.

"I met a young pregnant woman on my way back, a former slave, mother. I decided to bring her to Ouroboros with me," Julia explained no further and Hecate seemed placated by this answer, either forgetting or deciding not to ask Julia why she had dismissed her maenads and returned without them in the first place. Instead she grew serious.

"Daughter, I'm glad you've returned," she spoke very gravely, in english, "I want you to remain by my side in Ouroboros, and let Daughter Bella take over your maenads."

Julia was again taken aback.

"Of course, mother, anything you say," she answered.

"Good. I want you to be the second-in-command of my Daughters," Hecate told Julia, "There are many things you can do for me here. But first, I must show you something."


	25. All The Ways

The Goddess rose to her feet, ushering Julia to step outside of the atrium's central circle, then began to dance. The rhythm was simple, a step, a clap, and a shuffle, and she did it several times along the edge. At the end of every other clap she would shuffle her foot onto one of the thirteen stars surrounding and Julia realized she was entering a code.

When the dance finished she'd pressed all thirteen stars with her foot in a specific order and they lit up. She then took a bag of red sand and smeared a letter 'E' into the center of the circle. She gestured for Julia to join her and Julia complied. The circle descended as the Goddess spoke.

"After the wolf killed our people, I encountered a place I had never been before. It was strange, full of life yet cold. I learned many things there, including the existence of this place. After accepting the name Hecate, I decided that this would be my temple."

They descended deeper and deeper, lit by long columns of light. Julia watched the Goddess. She was shorter than Julia, prematurely stooped at a young age by tribal life. The elevator stopped in front of a huge steel door. Julia felt a chill in her bones.

"Mama, what is this?" she whispered.

"God," Hecate replied.

She opened the huge steel doors with a wave of her hand. They receded to reveal rows upon rows of chemical storage barrels. An endless corridor of chemicals, all unlabeled and unsecured. Julia felt her blood go cold.

"Within this chamber and the chambers below it are the most deadly biological weapons the old world left us. Smallpox, malaria, the bubonic plague, anthracnose, agent orange," the Goddess turned to look Julia in the eyes as she spoke, pontificating warmly about the room full of death they had entered. "But this is not all that lies underneath Ouroboros. For every weapon there is a beneficial chemical. Pesticides. Insulin. Albuterol. I say this is God, because within these walls there is death but there is also life. Boundless life."

As Hecate gestured to drums and drums of what was likely DDT Julia looked at her, really, truly looked at her. Despite being years older than Julia and being hunched over like an old woman Hecate was actually vibrant and full of life. She seemed young and healthy. By a trick of her face she appeared to be younger than Julia, even. Her wide-set eyes and round cheeks gave her a childlike appearance, and as Julia studied her she came to the conclusion that if it weren't for her seemingly-immedicable stoop Hecate could easily be confused for Julia's younger sister. Despite her suffering she still had a deep-rooted innocence that she hid in her role as Goddess behind a thick curtain of dreadlocks.

"Half of it has soured, lost its capacity to kill or heal to the entropy of time, but half is more than enough. This is the source of my power, the well I draw from when I want to exercise control over the pitiable tribes of the wasteland," Hecate's words seemed hollow and staged. She sounded completely unlike herself. Julia realized that she had prepared this speech. She was trying to impress Julia! This woman who had the authority to poison the entire wasteland three times over was trying to look smart in front of her favorite daughter. Julia was humbled. She listened patiently to Hecate's description of the secret vault beneath Ouroboros, asking pertinent questions until she arrived at the most pertinent question of all.

"Mama, why did you bring me here?"

"Because, my child, as I have done, so will you," and with that Julia became the second most powerful person in Ouroboros.


	26. Bitter Drink

Bitter Drink

Blood and fire, ash and wind. First the ashes of men, disintegrated by the goddess's servants, then the ashes of plants, as they burned in the fields. The Twin Mothers were used to this. Attacks came frequently, and the fields had known destruction many times before. Eldron could only shake his head and sigh. There hadn't been a raid in quite a while, two months at least, but he knew it was just a matter of time. The whole tribe felt it coming, felt the change in the winds. First the goddess vanished, right after the last raid by the Scorpion's Bite. Helea held the tribe together in that time of tribulation, acting as representative of the goddess in absentia.

She was so strong for the tribe in the time of its greatest crisis, that when the goddess returned Helea should have relaxed and returned to her old, happy self. She convened in secret with the goddess, and on the outside she seemed just as spirited as ever but over her hung a dark shadow. The shadow grew and grew until Helea was almost like death, a dark shade haunting the tribe. Everyone felt the tension and fear, especially when the annual Ogre migration didn't happen.

The Ogres visited the Twin Mothers the same time every year. When the tribe was very young they feared them, but the goddess taught them to respect the Ogres and the Ogres respected them. The huge, furry monsters generally kept the area clean of other predators, and largely ignored the Twin Mothers crops. Occasionally they up and died by the Twin Mothers village, providing the tribe with a good source of supplementary food. They discovered just how much they'd come to rely on Ogre meat when there wasn't any around.

Bad omens swirled in the air for weeks, and the Twin Mothers grew restless. Some in the tribe wanted to hunt, to go and find the Ogres or anything else, kill it and bring back the meat. The general consensus spoke out against it, though, and the goddess agreed. The Twin Mothers were to remain pacifists, no matter what.

When the new raid finally came Eldron breathed a sigh of relief. There were a lot of them, certainly, at least four hundred men had come to raid the Twin Mothers, but whether it was twenty men or twenty thousand, the routine was always the same. They came, they burned the fields, the Twin Mothers withdrew into their cliff home, they left, the Twin Mothers rebuilt the fields. That was how it had been for generations, and now seemed no different, save the foreboding omens.

The men gathered at the base of the Twin Mothers home, established tents and began a routine patrol. Some gave orders and some followed orders, some wore armor and others wore rags. They established camp and there they stayed. And stayed. And stayed. A week went by. That wasn't so strange. The Scorpion's Bite had stuck around for approximately a week and a half. The Twin Mothers had enough food to last for more than a month. Yet still the men stayed. Two weeks went by. The men established an arena and began to fight in it daily. Eldron laughed at this.

"You see, two men enter and one man leaves. That's what violence gets you. They'll deplete themselves before we run out of food," he told his wife, the leader of the tribe.

Still the men remained, and despite their near-constant fighting amongst themselves did not deplete. Men came and men went, they brought women and their camp grew more solid and permanent. After three weeks, more servants of the goddess arrived. They were defeated, surrounded and set upon with a fury and violence the Twin Mothers could not comprehend. Some of the men tore the goddess' servants apart with their bare hands, and attached the pieces of metal to their own armor, gaily draped in the skins of their enemies. Four weeks went by and still the men remained. The Twin Mothers turned to their goddess for help.

"Oh great Diana, we need your guidance. These men have come from parts unknown and they behave unlike any raiders we have seen before. We do not wish to violate your doctrine of pacifism, but we see no other alternative. Our stores are running out!" Alaya, Eldron's wife asked the goddess in her shrine for help, as Helea had cut herself off from the tribe, and had possibly already starved to death.

The goddess appeared before her, but her appearance was different somehow. She was not the shining light, the tall woman with the golden halo. She looked smaller, darker. This terrified Alaya more than anything else in the past few months.

The goddess Diana flickered and wavered, and only said one thing to Alaya before disappearing completely. She said, "_Run_."

But there was nowhere to go.


	27. A Good Warrior

A Good Warrior

He couldn't see. He couldn't see, and the other man was coming for him. He couldn't feel the blows anymore, he staggered back and forth, he held his hands up and when the blur of the other man came into his tunneled sight he swung but he could barely feel if his hits connected or not. There was blood on his face, blood on his knuckles, blood in his boots.

It started almost as soon as they established camp in the Twin Mothers basin. Decanus Cassiel began with snide remarks, suggesting loudly that the Dead Souls should be kept not with the other contubernias but in the animal pen. Mortuus ignored him, all of his men were used to similar treatment by their peers. Typically the jeers and insults would cease after the other Legionaries saw them in battle, but Twin Mothers was a different battlefield. The Dead Souls were a different contubernia.

It used to be they were the first into the fray and the last out. No centurion wanted authority of the loathsome Dead Souls and it became almost a game to see who could kill them. If it was an insane risk with no chance of survival the Dead Souls were sent to do it.

Eventually, though, a funny thing happened. The Dead Souls kept coming back. They survived, they grew tougher and meaner, they stopped being such expendable assets. Centurions began to hold them back from the front lines. They were valuable Legionaries, if only just. It took much longer for their veteran statuses to be recognized than it did for other Legionaries, but it happened. The Dead Souls were too valuable to waste as cannon fodder for the guns of a few security robots.

They didn't participate in the early battle and by the time they were assaulted by a fresh platoon of security robots there were too many Legionaries for the Dead Souls to distinguish themselves. They all just sat and looked ugly and invited slurs and hatred in the Twin Mothers basin Legion Camp. Leading the harassment was Veteran Decanus Cassiel.

In the beginning Cassiel's campaign was limited to loudly making rude comments, or casually insulting Mortuus and his men. Nothing the Dead Souls hadn't heard before, even as the volume steadily increased. As the days wore on the other contubernias began throwing trash at Mortuus' ghouls, or anyone seen with the ghouls. They destroyed the Dead Soul's tents, again and again, defacing them with filth and garbage. All this and the Dead Souls would've been fine, if it weren't for the whispers.

When they first made camp after burning the Twin Mothers crops they began to hear her, although no-one knew what was happening at first. The whispers filled everyone's heads, but everyone refused to acknowledge the whispers for fear that they were the only one. It seemed as though a beautiful woman's voice was talking to them.

"Turn back," was the first message, a soft whisper so quiet it was almost silent yet so insistent it could not be ignored.

"There is nothing for you here," she continued.

"You have nothing to gain."

The Legate made an official announcement, explaining that there was actually a woman whispering to the whole camp. He told the Legionaries her whispers were lies, and should be ignored. That it was a simple trick of the Twin Mothers, and was no threat to the Legion's might. All they had to do was ignore the voice, and soon it would stop, and the Twin Mothers would fall.

But it didn't stop. It grew more aggressive the longer they camped in the basin. She whispered to them every day, scathing insults and repeated discouragements meant to break their spirits.

"You are a tool, a weak puppet being manipulated by those who don't care whether you live or die. You are a simple tool, a blunt instrument with no thoughts of your own, no reason or creativity. You are not a man, you might as well be dead!"

Most Legionaries just shrugged it off at first, of course they were being used by men who didn't care whether they lived or died, that was central to the Legion's philosophy. No man was given the right to live, it was earned through conquest. Yet as she repeated it, again and again, the men began to falter. Some fled, only to be brought back and executed. After fleeing proved to be futile the men simply started killing themselves outright. The Malpais and his centurions began to make speeches everyday, boasting of the greatness of the Legion and the strength and abilities of its Legionaries. Morale-boosting became the number one concern of the elites, and contests of strength were organized, the winners rewarded handsomely with food and women. They kept their losses to about a man a day.

No-one got it worse than the Dead Souls, who were on the receiving end of discouragement and insults from the whispers and their peers. The tension grew, and one day Reave broke. They sat down to eat cold rations from the previous meal and the whispering began. It was never clear if the whispers were consistent for all Legionaries or if each man heard their own.

"You are a simple tool, a blunt instrument wielded by scarred and blighted hands. All you sow is death and all you shall reap is death. There are no great rewards for the tools of a blighted hand," was what Mortuus heard. He turned to Reave, who was ashen-faced. Reave looked at Mortuus directly in the eyes as he pulled out a pistol and shot himself through the head.

Decanus Cassiel was not as physically imposing as Mortuus Anima, possibly some deeply disguised insecurity stemming from such motivated his zealous animosity. He was certainly not a small man, though, it was just compared to Mortuus Anima that most Legionaries looked smaller. In any case he was the only Legionary willing to accept Mortuus' challenge in the arena. He was also the first to be challenged by Mortuus, who did not follow protocol by walking into Cassiel's tent and punching him in the face.

They donned their gladiator gear for the fight. It was the biggest crowd the camp had seen since establishment. Both men opted to fight without machetes. Although Cassiel was smaller and not as tough as Mortuus he was faster, and they were evenly matched. For every blow Mortuus struck against Cassiel, Cassiel struck two blows against Mortuus. Every grapple Mortuus trapped Cassiel in, Cassiel wormed his way out. The battle continued on longer than any fight Mortuus had engaged in since turning seventeen.

They were both bloody and beaten. Each man staggered on his feet, breathing hard, no longer feeling the blows. No longer caring. It all ended in a single blow. Cassiel retreated to the edge of the fighting pit, close to where he could hear the jeers and calls of the watching Legionaries distantly through his cauliflower-ed ears. He gathered all his strength, staring furiously at the hulking black figure in front of him and charged. Mortuus could barely see him, but with the shaky agility of a man without any energy left jumped back, grabbed Cassiel's arm and snapped it, pushing Cassiel to the ground. The fight was over. Cassiel lay bruised and broken, his crimson blood slowly pooling around him. But he was alive.

"Finish him," the Legate ordered Mortuus. Mortuus, unsteady on his feet and trying to wipe his own blood out of his eyes looked at the Legate, and with all the defiance he could muster said one word.

"No."

It was unprecedented. No Legionary defied their superior, much less the Legate himself. Mortuus might as well have defied Caesar. The crowd around the fighting arena was stunned. Where there had once been raucous noise that could be heard all the way up the cliff-face there was now silence. Everyone wondered what the Legate would do.

"It is the law of the Legion. You have bested this Legionary in the arena, you must kill him," the Legate said, calmly but firmly.

"He's a good warrior. I don't want to kill a good warrior," Mortuus told his commander. During their battle Mortuus had developed a grudging respect for Cassiel that he could not deny, even in the face of Legion authority.

"He is not fit to be a Legionary. If you disobey, you are not fit to be a Legionary, and you both shall die," The Legate did not raise his voice, he did not reprimand Mortuus. He simply reminded Mortuus Anima the way of Caesar's Legion. There was no arguing.

Mortuus sighed and limped over to Cassiel's prone body. He picked up the fallen decanus, and twisted the man's neck until it snapped. The spectators cheered, except for the Legate, who merely watched. Watched and contemplated.


	28. The Flag-Bearer

The Flag-Bearer

The commander's tent of the Malpais Legate was spartan but efficient, a reflection of its owner. There were no ornaments or fineries, no luxuries. Nothing but instruments of war. Charts, maps, and enough weapons to supply a centuria, all organized in various states of repair. There appeared to not even be a cot for sleeping, so efficiently utilized was the space. In truth the Malpais slept on crates of ammunition. He was a hard, prickly man, and to earn his respect was more difficult than conquering a hundred tribes. The Flag-Bearer was one of the few to draw his praise.

He entered the Malpais' tent silently, patiently waiting for the Legate to acknowledge his presence. The Legate ignored him for some time, absorbed in the fastidious cleaning of a machete gladius. Without looking up the Legate spoke in his intimidating baritone.

"There are six things the lord hateth," the flickering light of the torch lamps made him into a silhouette, his back turned to the Flag-Bearer, "and the seventh his soul detesteth."

The Flag-Bearer assumed the Legate was referring to Caesar every time he talked about the lord. It was a grandiloquent way to discuss the head of the bull, befitting of a man whose legend was growing from the bones of the wasteland like the thorny vines that seemed to be the only crop in the four states wasteland.

"The seventh," the Legate continued, polishing the gladius with a bloody rag soaked in oil, "is him that soweth discord among brethren."

The Flag-Bearer remained silent. The Legate set down the Gladius. He slowly rose from his chair, "'In whose heart is perverseness, who deviseth evil continually, and who soweth discord.'"

"Gloria Mars," the Flag-Bearer knelt when the Legate turned to face him.

"Report, Flag-Bearer."

"I have done as you asked. I have seen the whisper's source, I have no doubt," the Flag-Bearer rose to his feet, standing slightly taller than the Legate, but not prouder. "I followed the robots trail to a fertile valley. It is a place not meant for my eyes, nor for the eyes of any man. Had it not been my orders, I should never have looked at all, and even as I did I quickly looked away."

The Flag-Bearer recalled the valley from which the security robots that had attacked the camp originated from and even in memory he could barely stand it. It was a place of unstained beauty, a place unfit for the wasteland. He knew in revealing its location to his brothers he had assured its destruction. Another burden for his soul to bear in service to his Legion, a burden he carried proudly if not sadly.

"The eyes of God see all," the Legate said cryptically, then turning away said, "Thank you Flag-Bearer. You are dismissed for now."

The Flag-Bearer made a polite bow and left the Legate's tent. The Legate then called in his quartermaster.

As soon as the quartermaster entered the commander's tent the Legate demanded to know, "How much napalm is left in our stores?"


	29. A Simple Tool

A Simple Tool

The Legion burned the Nursery to the ground. All of it. All of the trees, all of the bushes, all of the crops and flowers and vines. They smashed open the greenhouses. They slaughtered the animals, they butchered the very last non-mutated cow in the American wasteland. They collapsed the repository, assuring that non-mutated cow would never be born again. In the factory they smashed GECK after GECK after GECK. When they lit the napalm that reduced it all to cinders a shrill metallic screech exploded from the control tower, a noise so loud and steady it sounded like a siren but was actually the shrill and bitter wail of the Goddess Diana.

Flames licked the tower. Flames licked the walls of the valley. Flames licked the face of the Flag-Bearer, who watched it all and did nothing. He led the Legionaries to the Nursery then watched unmovingly as they destroyed every piece of it.

Mortuus Anima, the Dead Soul, led the charge into the control tower. They pried the doors open and smashed the security robots waiting inside. They tore down monitors and pried open computer banks, but it did nothing to quell the screaming of the Goddess. As they made their way deeper into the tower they could discern the words she was screamed at them.

"FOULWASTEDMISERABLEGRATINGWH ORECHILDRENSPOILINGTHETREASU RESOFTHEWASTEYOUWILLNEVERKNO WTHEDEPTHSOFYOURDISGUSTINGWR ETCHEDPUTREDMISERABLEDISGUST INGDISEASEDTORTURESYOUIGNORA NTSIMPLEWASTEDSLIME," it pierced their ears and made them wince. The entire seemed to shake wrathfully so brutal and unrelenting was her metallic cry. Yet still they continued further into the central chamber of the control tower until they were at the door leading to Diana's ZAX mainframe.

When they pried the door open half the men retreated in fear, as it appeared an Alpha Deathclaw was waiting for them on the other side. Mortuus Anima gripped his fire ax and defiantly strode through the Deathclaw, into a room full of unimaginable horrors. The central room of the control tower mirrored the chaos and horror outside, with bright black flames as tall as Mortuus and the burned and dismembered corpses of countless animals wailing and clawing at him but it was all illusions, projections that Mortuus ignored as he carefully and deliberately strode towards the ZAX mainframe disguised as a forty-foot-tall woman bathed in golden light, her face contorted in pain and wrath as she screamed.

"FOULVILEPUSTULOUSBILESUCKING SCUMYOUWILLDIEALONEANDUNLOVE DBROKENANDBEATENANDSTARVEDBY YOUROWNHANDSFORGOTTENANDALON EANDDESPISEDBYYOURLOVERSANDO FFSPRING," the woman screeched at him as he walked step-by-step, sweat running down his face towards her.

He knew she couldn't hear him, yet as he raised his ax he spoke, "A simple tool," he sneered and then brought the axe down upon the illusory Goddess' ankle, directly into the ZAX's monitor bank.

"A SIMPLE TOOL," he screamed as the illusions flickered in and out, as the Goddess stopped screaming and tried to swat him aside with her hand but the hand just passed through him, "A SIMPLE TOOL!" he screamed as tears welled in his eyes and he brought the ax down again and again, "A. SIMPLE. TOOL."

The illusions flickered away, the Goddess's plaintive cries to stop cut in and out with each blow of the ax. Sparks flew from the ZAX mainframe as the circuitry was bashed to pieces. Just before the final blow, as the Goddess Diana flickered in and out one final time, Mortuus muttered, "A simple tool can bring down a God."

He delivered the killing blow to the mangled machinery, threw his ax to the ground, and walked away in disgust. The Twin Mothers surrendered the next day.


	30. Viva Las Vegas

Viva Las Vegas

"Twenty minutes to showtime, ladies!" Hadrian strode through the backstage. Girls sat at a long row of mirrors applying thick layers of makeup, dressing up in sequined unitards and ridiculous feathered hats. Eunuch guards stood at the door of the dressing room, turning away desperate and horny Legionaries. One centurion wouldn't take "By order of Caesar" as an excuse and had to be beaten up and carried away. Dozens of young men flitted back and forth carrying instruments. The air was full of excitement and tension.

In her own private dressing room Julia Aram applied spirit gum to her shaved head and affixed her black toupee. This was the big show, and it had to be perfect.

"What do you think?" she turned around and asked Hadrian.

"I think it's perfect. I think it's perfect so long as it doesn't fall off when you're prancing around out there," he cattily replied, "You have the steps memorized?"

"I could do the whole routine blindfolded," Julia tested the strength of her wig, "Hardly matters anyway. The audience isn't going to look away from the showgirl tits." She checked the tape binding her own chest down.

"Caesar proves once again you can build an empire around dirty old men," Hadrian quipped and kissed Julia on the top of the head, "Go out and slay him."

It was a brilliant plan. It was so brilliant it barely needed the intervention of the Daughters at all, but the Goddess didn't gamble. She had a mind like a steel trap and very little that went on in the wasteland escaped her notice. Julia knew that Hecate was just a woman, she knew that when most other Daughters didn't. Julia had seen Hecate at her very worst, weak and scared and powerless. But Julia had also seen the Goddess as she scoured over her Daughter's tribal reports, had seen the Goddess bit by bit build a comprehensive and total image of the wasteland. Built it not like a picture, not a static image, but like a machine, with living and interacting parts. Julia had seen the Goddess conjure the entire four corners wasteland in front of her, and then tweak it, giving some and taking some away, watching events ripple outwards, predicting what would happen and generally playing with people's lives like dolls. It was in those moments, where Hecate towered over the wasteland and sculpted it to suit her, Julia couldn't help but feel like she was really in the presence of a deity.

"Everyone get in position!" Hadrian barked. Everyone involved in the production except the eunuch guards provided by Caesar were Daughters or Hounds of Hecate. They'd all been cherry-picked by the Goddess herself for this mission. Julia had been given the lead role not simply because of her charisma and dedication but so the Goddess' second-in-command could be there if anything went wrong. Hecate didn't want any part of the plan to go awry, even though in all actuality the stakes were very low. It was almost as though she wanted to show off for her enemy, even though she made sure he didn't even know she existed. As far as Caesar knew he would not be watching trained killers and dedicated cultists performing ancient rock 'n roll in a rebuilt theatre in Phoenix, but a simple band of skilled traveling performers. Even though he'd never know it was by her command, Hecate was determined to make sure he was completely blown away by her followers.

Julia stood behind the set as the curtain drew open. She heard Hadrian welcome the Legion's elite to the performance. Hadrian made a joke and the Legionaries laughed. The lights came up and the music turned on. Everything but the conga drums was pre-recorded and being played through the speakers. Julia burst out of the saloon door mock-up set and began lip synching to a three-hundred year old song.

Julia had been to the ruins of Las Vegas only once, on her return trip from the Divide. She'd avoided it on her way to the Divide, warned well in advance of how dangerous it was. A few tribal gangs held different parts of the city. It was a cruel place that held none of the glitz and glamor the song publicized. Maybe somewhere deep in the Sawneys or Slither Kin territory there was a shadow of the bright light city but it was unlikely given how predatory and vicious the tribes she remembered were.

Besides being startlingly maintained for the past few centuries Julia couldn't understand the city's hypnotic power. Everywhere in the Mojave seemed to point towards the ruin, as though some sort of charm spell cast long ago kept drawing people to it. This old world legend of Las Vegas was what Hecate drew on. If the Goddess was right, Vegas would be the death of Caesar and his Legion. Julia had no doubt of that.

She looked out into the crowd but it was too dark to find the face of Caesar. Would he get the message? Would it seep into his skull, trick him into desiring the miserable pit of the Mojave? Had he already been planning to march across the Colorado? Was he enjoying the show?

It hardly mattered. The song finished, the stage lights went out and the Legion hooted and cheered. Even if Caesar now felt the subliminal compulsion to conquer Vegas, it would take years for him to act on it. There were more shows, more psychological warfare to be made. It was a long con, but Rome wasn't destroyed in a day.


	31. Statues

Statues

Atia gave birth to a healthy baby boy via c-section. She was only pregnant in Ouroboros for two and a half months, and she spent most of that time off her feet. She was given accommodations amongst the other pregnant women in a maternity ward that she learned was of particular religious significance to the Daughters of Hecate.

She learned from her ward-mates about the highly formalized and practiced ritual of conception within the Daughters. All pairings were organized by the Goddess herself, and to have a child that was not sanctioned by Hecate was blaspheme. Atia was terrified that she would be forced to give up her baby. Unbeknownst to her she was supposed to have an abortion in order to stay with the Daughters, but Julia interceded on her behalf.

Atia was still scared of the strange world she had been brought into. After she was outed as a blasphemer none of the other women in her ward would talk to her. She was alone in what at first seemed like a very inviting place, but which had turned out to be unfriendly. Thankfully, Julia visited her regularly.

"Don't worry," Julia comforted her, "Once you have your kid everything will get better. You can see the baths, the gardens, the library..."

"What's a library?" Atia interjected.

"A library?" Julia sipped on her coffee. Whenever she was in Ouroboros Julia wore her facepaint, as was respectful to the Goddess. She also preferred to be shirtless. She spent so much time away from Ouroboros, weeks spent without taking off her armor even to sleep, that she tried to wear as little clothing as possible when she was back in the fold. Her right breast had been tattooed with a swirl when she was still a Twisted Hair, and her face paint was styled after her tattoo. "A library is where we keep all the books. I'm sure Caesar has one somewhere."

"Books!" Atia sat up in shock, "There are books here?!"

"Oh yeah," Julia smiled over her cup, "And that isn't all. There's a bar, a dancehall, the hookah room..."

"I haven't seen a book that wasn't a military ledger in years. I haven't even seen a ledger since I got sold to Aurelius," Atia reflected sadly. When she was still part of the Fredonians they had a few books that she had poured over, only to watch them thrown into the fire by the Legion.

"Well, the next time I visit, I'll bring you a book, okay? Any preference?"

So Julia started bringing books from the library whenever she visited. Atia had not made any preference as to what she wanted to read, so Julia brought her some history books about ancient Rome and Julius Caesar's _Commentarii, _to educate her on the true history of the Legion. At first Atia was furious, angry that she and the whole wasteland had been deceived. She talked to Julia about it and Julia laughed it off, telling her, "Well now _you_ know. Don't worry about anybody else."

"That's, that's... irresponsible! This monster is out there subjugating innocent people because he wants to pretend to be Julius Caesar and you aren't doing anything about it?!" Atia argued.

"I'm doing plenty about it, okay? We all are. We're working on a new plan to bring Caesar down. In any case, exposing the lie wouldn't change anything. Most fall for the lie pretty damn easily," Julia muttered. Atia was offended by her insinuation, "I mean to say, most of the Legionaries probably wouldn't care even if they found out Caesar was just a pretender. They'd still go around killing and enslaving."

Julia started bringing other books. Some fiction, some non-fiction. Atia read them all hungrily. Sometimes they discussed the books, but other times Julia hadn't read them and they had to talk about other things. Mostly they talked about their lives, funny and sad stories of things they had done or had happened to them. Sometimes Julia helped Atia work through the trauma of being a slave. Once when they were talking (and Atia had just read _Huckleberry Finn_) they discussed slavery in general.

"One thing I always wondered, why don't Legion slaves just escape?" Julia asked, "I've seen them in plenty of situations where they're left alone for hours on end, right on the edge of Legion territory. Why don't they just run?"

Atia was sometimes shocked at how ignorant Julia was, and she had to remind herself that Julia had never experienced life under Legion rule.

"And go where, exactly?" she asked.

"I don't know, but if you go far enough west there's a whole nation of people who are free. There's places out there!"

Atia took a deep breath.

"When my tribe was defeated, back when it was still the Blackfoot tribe and not 'Caesar's Legion,' they destroyed... everything," she sighed mournfully, "I don't remember a lot about being a Fredonian, but I will always remember the statues. We had these stone statues, it was this thing the tribe had done for years, everyone decorated their houses with them. Some people had kind of crappy ones but some people had... just really beautiful, really intricate statues. Statues they had spent their whole lives carving. Some were of people, some were of animals, but everyone had their own to be proud of. Your statue was who you were," Atia made a sad, far-away look, gazing into a place that didn't exist anymore, "Among the Fredonians, your statue was who you were. When the Blackfoots beat us, I mean really beat us, in a way that no tribe had ever defeated another tribe before, the first thing they did was they took everyones' statues, and they smashed them. They picked them up and they threw them on the ground, threw them off the cliff-face, whatever it took to destroy them. That was when we stopped being Fredonians."

Julia thought about her own tribe, how after the Legion conquered the Twisted Hairs they probably made everyone cut their hair. She had the sad thought of everyone forced into the meeting circle to have their beautiful dreads hacked off by Legion machetes.

"For all of us that was home. We didn't know anything else. We had our village, and our hunting ground, and when that was gone we had nothing. The wasteland isn't a place of possibilities, people who left the tribe died out there. We had nowhere to go. So we stayed," Atia looked back at Julia, "And anyway, there are slaves who try to escape, even still. At least there were before I got sold. They all end up being crucified, but they still try."

Julia looked away, and thought sadly for a moment.

"I'm sorry I asked. It's a painful thing, I understand."

"I'm glad you asked," Atia squeezed Julia's hand, "because you understand now."

A week later Atia gave birth. She named her son Julius.


	32. The Hunter

The Hunter

Centurion Scipio Venator was a patient man. He was a proud man, a strong man with a high arch in his eyebrows and a cruel turn to his lips. He had a glass eye which he tried to hide by squinting all the time. Squinting and scowling, a consummate action hero with a chiseled jaw and grim determination.

He was more prudent than his peers. It took a tactical mind and a cruel disposition to rise to the ranks of Centurion, but among other Centurions he was perceived as weak. He didn't jump for glory like they did, he wasn't driven to extreme victories against impossible odds at the risk of great loss. He was not decorated, although he had a satisfactory victory record. He was cautious, he waited and he held back to strike at the best moment possible. He did not lack courage, he simply had patience and cunning.

He looked for patterns, assessed strengths and weaknesses before striking. If it was something to be proud of in the Legion he could have boasted of his success in keeping his Legionaries alive battle after battle but, alas, in the Legion that was a moral and strategic failing. Testing recruits again and again in battle, killing the weak and molding the strong was a central tenant of Caesar's doctrine. He was seen as soft-hearted, a coddler.

This was not true. If anything the fact that he rarely was actively sending his men to their deaths meant he worked them much harder off the battlefield. Disruptive or disrespectful Legionaries were typically either killed or sent to march under Scipio Venator's banner. The assignment was seen by the Centurions as punishment for Scipio and among the rank-and-file it was seen as punishment for the Legionary. Service for Centurion Venator meant constant exercise, and unlike other centuria the Legionaries built their own fortifications and cleaned their own weapons, rather than let their slaves do so.

It was no surprise the dead souls were transferred to Venator's command. They were a stain on the Legion's purity and centurias traded them as often as possible. Mortuus Anima had served more than two dozen commanders in his nearly twenty-year career in the Legion. None of them were like Scipio Venator.

Often Centurions were given first pick of slaves when a new batch were conquered, but if Caesar or the Legate were there they took precedence. The Malpais Legate rarely took slaves unless he considered them talented combatants, so it was an unfortunate twist of fate that the victory over the Twin Mothers marked his first selection of a female captive.

Venator had been selecting specific women from conquered tribes for nearly the past year. In his campaigns he had begun to notice a pattern, in every tribe they conquered there was always one particular woman who didn't quite fit. Her appearance was unlike any other in the tribe, she occasionally would not speak the same language as the tribe. It was as though there was a secret cabal of women operating across dozens of tribes, and Scipio wanted to know why.

Of course the Legate for the first time ever demanded a female slave, and of course it was the woman who fit Scipio's pattern. A woman named Ruth, who looked nothing like the other members of the tribe and spoke the Twin Mothers dialect with a foreign accent. Scipio could have been killed for requesting Ruth away from the Legate, yet he was too close to the secret of the cabal to pass up the opportunity to interrogate her.

The Legate seemed displeased at Scipio's request, but relieved that Scipio had the good sense to make the request in private. The Legate acquiesced when Scipio explained he wanted to question her because he suspected she was part of a threat to the Legion, but he made one demand.

"You are to accept the contubernia known as the dead souls, under Mortuus Anima. You are to retain them until they die in your service," the Legate demanded. Scipio agreed to his terms.

Mortuus Anima accompanied Scipio to the interrogation. He stood behind the Centurion, who sat facing the woman still wearing ornate face paint. They were silent for a moment, then the Centurion spoke.

"Tell me what you know of the 'Goddess' Hecate," he said.


	33. Bled Dry

Bled Dry

Up until the very end Athena gave medical care to the Crazy Horns. Her bedside manner had become lacking, admittedly. She no longer told the tribals stories as she bandaged wounds, no longer smiled as she tied splints. She had grown cold and atrabilious, mouth always tight and eyes always downcast.

She no longer taught, as per the Goddess' orders. Now the tribe taught itself, her former students now teaching the new generations of tribespeople, such as the new generations were. The Goddess wasn't interested in teaching the tribes too much. Just enough to exploit, Athena realized. The tribes of the wasteland were not allies to the Goddess, they were resources. Even if Athena had improved the individual lives of the Crazy Horns she was no more altruistic than a farmer tending her crops. Once she'd completely stolen the tribe's future away she would abandon them, let the field lay fallow.

Until that happened she was determined to make sure the Crazy Horns were provided with care. Before the canaanites attacked the Crazy Horns had been pushed further and further to hunt and scavenge in more dangerous lands by surrounding tribes. Cases of tetanus were on the rise, Crazy Horns stepping on old nails or cutting themselves on rusty car doors in places that were once the industrial centers of Salt Lake City.

Athena made a note of it in her report back to Ouroboros. She requested a supply of tetanus boosters and shots. For the first time ever, her requests for supplies were denied. She was not told why, but the official reason was because those most at risk for tetanus were mostly older women who had already given birth numerous times. It was believed that they were unlikely to produce any more fit children. That was the doctrine that the Goddess had created for her Daughters. If they were no longer producing children for the Goddess she was fine with the deaths of some tribals, even wanted it. This system favored male tribals, whose capacity to produce healthy children did not decline as much as a woman's with age.

Athena wasn't told why there would be no medicine for the tribe, but she knew why. The Crazy Horns were no longer valuable. They were getting used up and now that their well was dry they were soon to be left to the wild dogs. Athena shouldn't have cared. She was just as done with the Crazy Horns as Ouroboros was.

If she had never arrived among the Crazy Horns, never given them medical attention or taught them how to survive, they wouldn't be in any better a position than they were now, she told herself. Almost half of all the children delivered were not snatched away like the others, for their failure to meet Hecate's standards. Even more than that half would've never been born at all if it weren't for Athena and the Goddess' help. Athena certainly could've abandoned the Crazy Horns in favor of her true people, the Daughters of Hecate.

She wouldn't, though. There was something that wouldn't let her abandon those people any more than it had let her abandon Longhorn the hunter so many years ago. That fire lit back inside her breast and so she developed a plan. She stayed in Ouroboros much longer than normal, a little over a week. She knew some of the other Daughters who lived among tribes in the waste, and the Daughter she knew the best was Soledad, who was shaman among another Utah tribe. She begged Soledad to fake a tetanus outbreak among her own tribe in the hopes that Soledad's tribe would be deemed fit to receive the medicine. Soledad agreed to Athena's ruse and so in her reports she falsified a tetanus outbreak. She was provided with the necessary medicine. On their trip back through Utah Soledad gave Athena the medicine, so that the Crazy Horns would be provided for, for at least a little longer.


	34. Boiling Point

Boiling Point

Tonantzin went scavenging by the Long 15 in Salt Lake City, at the Surplus. She travelled with a small group of other Crazy Horn women. Ostensibly they were hunting. The loss of Crazy Horn hunting grounds (already stretched thin by the population boom) had caused a food shortage.

But there weren't any animals at the Surplus. No wasteland plants had yet managed to compensate for the poison land, the legacy of toxic industrial chemicals seeping into the ground for two centuries. There were ants at the Surplus but their meat was garbage. There was no food in the Surplus, but that wasn't what Tonantzin was looking for.

She was looking for weapons. The Crazy Horns were salvaging metal in order to fashion it into better weapons than their traditional granite clubs. Tonantzin and her companions were gathering metal pipes, good pieces of sheet metal, wrenches, hammers, anything that could be fashioned into a weapon.

Athena didn't know what Tonantzin was actually looking for. The elders didn't want Athena's expulsion to be violent, but they remembered well how she taught them to fear her laser pistol. The whole tribe had heard stories of other tribes who rejected the Daughters of Hecate being plagued by famine and disease, and set upon by other tribes cowed by the Goddess and her envoys. They wanted to be prepared.

Athena was being kept in the dark by the Crazy Horns but she knew something was coming. The tension in the tribe was slowly reaching a boiling point. When Athena came back from Ouroboros the Crazy Horns were no longer her tribe, and she could feel it every time she walked among them. They watched her while she watched them, she stalked through the tribe like a predator among prey.

The Crazy Horns weren't a warlike tribe, though, nor were they scavengers. Circumstances had pushed them out of their comfort zone and Tonantzin paid the price by getting a rusty nail stuck through her foot at the Surplus. She had to be supported all the way back to the village by her companions.

Athena was engaging in her now-daily dance of fear and intimidation with the Crazy Horns when the scavengers came back from the surplus. Immediately Athena snapped out of her posturing when she saw Tonantzin's foot.

"We didn't take the nail out, we didn't know what to do," one of the other scavengers was hysterical, near to the point of tears. Tonantzin's foot did look terrible.

"It's fine, you did the right thing, if you pulled this thing out she probably would've bled to death on the way back," Athena reassured her while Tonantzin went pale. Athena raised Tonantzin's foot while giving her a cloth bag, "Huff this."

Tonantzin held the bag to her mouth a breathed deep. She passed out. Athena removed the nail from her foot, applying pressure to stem the flow of blood. She wrapped the wound in thick poly-cotton bandages and gave Tonantzin a tetanus shot. She smiled unconsciously as she finished up, proud of her work. Then she looked up.

She was surrounded by a crowd of stone-faced Crazy Horns. Some were clutching metal weapons, clubs and spears crudely fashioned from scrap from the Surplus and other former industrial sights. There wasn't a single friendly tribes-person around her. She hadn't realized just how toxic her relations with the tribe had become. The tension had risen so gradually, and Athena was so immersed in it that only when she had temporarily stepped outside to tend to Tonantzin's wounds did she realize how intense it had gotten.

The tribe gripped their weapons tightly as Athena stood up, untied her laser pistol from her waist and dumped it unceremoniously into unconscious Tonantzin's lap. She began to walk, and the crowd parted to let her. She marched unmolested until she encountered the Canaanites, who had surrounded the village. They were dressed in puritanical clothing, immediately distinguishable from the Crazy Horns. The Canaanites all wore high collars and long sleeves, and none of the Canaanites who came to expel Athena were female. All of them carried guns, semi-automatic pistols and automatic rifles. In the middle of the Canaanites stood Jeremiah Rigdon, clutching a shotgun and sneering.

"Your lies are no longer welcome here, false prophet," he told Athena. He gripped his shotgun tighter as she approached, a woman unarmed and half his height. He did not move to let her pass like the Crazy Horns had. She stared at him, heavy-lidded and expecting no quarter.

"Whore of Babylon, you're time is at hand. You've poisoned this tribe against its allies and against God. You have woven a web of deceits and coerced the innocent into the worship of a demon and a blasphemer," he boomed in his great, echoing voice, a voice that had cowed generations of Canaanites and the elders of the Crazy Horns. It was a voice full of assurance and the authority of the christian god. The tribe cowered at Jeremiah's words. Athena simply stood before him. She was tired, and defeated. She expected no mercy nor did she desire it. She looked Jeremiah right in the eyes.

"Are you going to shoot me?" she asked, "Or will you step aside?"

Jeremiah seemed taken aback. He had not intended to use violence unless Athena had become violent, but he was expecting her to resist a little. He wanted her gone, but he hadn't expected her to leave. He withdrew in stunned silence.

Athena walked, leaving the Crazy Horns village behind her. She hadn't taken anything with her when she left, just her clothes and her collar. She left all her medication, she left all her personal belongings. She walked and she didn't look back.

"Athena! Wait!" a voice cried out after she was nearly half a mile from the village. It was Too Much, the young Crazy Horns warrior. He ran to her, clutching her laser pistol in his hands. He handed it to her, and it seemed as though he wanted to say something, but he withdrew without a single word. Athena was all alone.


	35. In the Shadow

In the Shadow

The Goddess assured Athena that the Crazy Horns would be suitably punished for turning away from Hecate and casting out her messenger. Athena was wary of the Goddess' retribution. She did not feel any particular animosity towards the Crazy Horns, but she supposed it was out of her hands. The Goddess had to punish all tribes that did not submit to her. It was politics, not personal.

And so Athena began to readjust to civilization. She had been returning to Ouroboros once a month for the past decade, and the routine had never changed. She turned in her reports for the Goddess, and she was debriefed by the Sibyls. Then for a day and a half she ritually imbibed alcohol and smoked bufo. Usually she also danced at the dance hall, and lounged in the baths. Every month she looked forward to returning, but in all that time it never occurred to her what it was really like to live at Ouroboros, in the shadow of the Goddess' pyramid.

Athena was given a place to sleep, a clean cot in a spartan bunker. She shared a room with seven other Daughters. There was evidence in the room that other women lived there, pictures and paintings on the walls and clothing on the other cots, but for a week Athena did not see her roommates.

She lived by the schedule she kept with the Crazy Horns. Every day she woke up as the sun rose, even though she could no longer see the sun when she awoke. The bunker was different from her animal-skin tent. But it didn't matter, six AM was when Athena awoke and some part of her wanted to keep it that way. She wanted to be awake as much as possible. She was scared of the time she spent sleeping. When she was sleeping so many things could be happening and she would have no idea.

Was she sleeping when the Crazy Horns plotted their betrayal, her expulsion? She must have. Had the Goddess refused her request for medicine while she slept her alcohol off? It felt that way. When she was among the Crazy Horns a starving diamondback slipped into camp one night and ate a family and their livestock; two children a woman a man and two bighorners. They found it the next morning in the family's tent, lethargic from its meal. Athena was asleep when the diamondback attacked. She was asleep when her husband died.

When Athena wasn't sleeping she was wandering aimlessly. For a long time her purpose was clear, at least she had thought it was clear. She healed the Crazy Horns, and aided them in decisions. She stole their healthy children away and replaced them with sickly transplants. She made sure they worshipped the Goddess. Until the time just before her expulsion from the tribe her purpose had been so clear, and even near the end she still knew where her loyalty lay. Now that she was relieved from her responsibilities loyalty wasn't enough. She felt lost and aloof. She felt no more welcome among Ouroboros than she had felt among the Crazy Horns in the weeks prior.

Which wasn't to say that Ouroboros wasn't beautiful and inviting. The work of the Goddess and her Daughters (and a few Hounds) had rendered the area a lush paradise, where once previously-extinct plant life flourished. There were orchards and orchids and roses and tall golden grasses that rippled melodically in the wind. Whenever she was hungry Athena walked over to the apple trees and plucked a huge ripe apple, washed it in one of the many fountains and ate it, core and all. Often she let the juices drip down her face, smearing her face-paint. It was heavenly.

Sometimes she talked to other Daughters. Occasionally she helped them garden but she felt clumsy and oafish tending the plants. They hardly needed tending anyway. Most of them were genetically modified to repel predators and the ones that weren't were covered in pesticides. The gardens required little upkeep beyond trimming and harvesting. She did not feel talented enough in those respects to take the place of another Daughter, or a Mr. Handy.

Towards the end of her first week back she watched the children of the Goddess play. Boys and girls too young to be Hounds or Daughters, most of them "recruited" from tribes across the wasteland. A few were even descended from the Crazy Horns, the babies Athena had stolen away from their biological parents to be raised in the shadow of the Goddess' temple. She watched the children play and learn. All in one moment she was filled with overwhelming love. As she watched children with facial features she knew all too well learn multiplication, an abstract concept completely foreign to the tribal way of life she felt vindicated. She watched them play, these young children totally oblivious to the suffering of the wasteland. Children that had been rescued, not kidnapped, from a hard and desperate life struggling for survival in uninviting badlands.

Athena watched the children play for awhile longer then returned to her bunker. To her surprise she encountered one of her roommates. She was a short, curvy girl, pale complexion and a short brown haircut. Her face paint was patterned after flowers, daisies maybe. She was folding clothes to store in the trunk beneath her cot. She greeted Athena as she walked in.

"Oh hey, you're the new roommate, right? My name's Sunflower," she extended her hand for a handshake but when Athena took her hand she pulled Athena in for a hug.

"Hi, my name's Athena," she answered, overwhelmed but grateful. It was the most connection she had made with anyone since returning. This woman who had only just begun to share a living space with her, accepting her without reservation, completely and utterly openly accepting her was a revelation to Athena. No tribal would have such unselfconscious acceptance. The respect of a tribe like the Crazy Horns was earned not given, and even though she'd earned the respect a of the Crazy Horns a long time ago their hard and unfriendly way of life had come to dominate her reality.

"It's kind of weird to be back," she admitted to her roommate, "I was a Harpy for so long, out their in the tribes. I guess I just feel kind of useless now."

"Honey, you need to relax!" Sunflower admonished her, "We're all Harpies who had to leave their tribes for one reason or another.," Sunflower flashed a big, dopey smile, "My tribe was conquered by the Legion. Six-Guns, who sleeps over here," Sunflower pointed at the cot covered in ragdolls, "her tribe was wiped out by a sudden outbreak of influenza. Abuela's tribe," she indicated towards the cot that Athena realized had a rifle tucked between piles of clothing, "all got mercury poisoning. We've all been assigned to live here until there's something else for us to do, but I think mostly we've been forgotten about. We started to consider it retirement after awhile. You should come join us!"

"Join you do what?" Athena asked.

"Join us performing the ritual!"

Athena always looked forward to returning to Ouroboros, she liked the drinking and the dancing and the smoking. The rituals paraded around under the disguise of religion, but Athena always knew in the back of her mind that really it was a reward for service to the Goddess. The Harpies were the lowest rung among the Daughters, and had the most difficult job. It made sense to reward them every once in awhile with a little partying. Athena knew that all Harpies did the rituals when they returned, but she had underestimated the scope of the Goddess' efforts. New Harpies returned every day to turn in their reports. And every day they engaged in the ritual, and Athena and her roommates were there right alongside them. Athena began to slip away into a drug-fueled haze, and she couldn't have been happier.


	36. Ghost

Ghost

There was a ghost in Hecate's temple; a vengeful, bitter ghost. A sinister visage that Athena had long given up for dead. Occasionally it would come to her in her dreams, haunt her while she was sleeping and vulnerable. A demon summoned by her subconscious to torture her when she felt upset or scared. It had haunted her when her relations with the Crazy Horns faltered, twisted her dreams into visions of violence and hatred.

She had never seen it before in waking life, though. The sight chilled her to her core. Just a fleeting glimpse in the dark dance hall, the face so quickly disappeared it could've been a trick of the smoke. Athena was certain it was a bufo-inspired vision but the thought didn't give her much comfort. The ghost only appeared to Athena as an omen of foreboding, as a grave warning of bad things to come.

Athena had settled into life at Ouroboros. She and the other forgotten Daughters engaged themselves principally in reverie and recreation. Every hedonistic whim she devised was indulged. She ate, she drank, she lounged. Athena felt herself slip away, her memories of the Crazy Horns becoming a drug-addled muddle of impressions and images, brief and disconnected glimpses into a life which was no longer in any way relevant to her. Pleasure became so commonplace she hardly felt it anymore, she was so submerged in the feeling of ecstasy she no longer recognized it. She was drowning, comfortably, and she didn't want it to end.

Then the ghost appeared and it shocked her out of her descent. It was a cold splash of water, a fleeting encounter with death itself. It terrified her, it truly terrified her. Something unimaginably bad was coming. Soon she was catching glimpses of the bitter ghost out of the corner of her eye every other day. She'd be lounging in the temple baths, soaking in the steam and talking about nothing at all with her new friends and it appeared nearly out of sight, passing menacingly through the corridor. She saw it in the gardens, a dark shadow skulking between the trees of the orchard. Often it would come to her in the dance hall, swirling around her, haunting Athena with its visions of death and betrayal. It was enough to send her into hiding.

She retreated to the bunker and refused to leave. She hid under her covers like a child hiding from the dark. The ghost in her waking nightmares held so much sway over her she was forced to come down from the bufo. She hoped that would end it, that the haunting would come to an unceremonious close as her mind sobered between her bedsheets. It didn't chase away the nagging feelings of impending doom, but she felt relieved that soon her waking life would at least be released of the visions.

Her roommates were concerned but were so steeped in their own self-love that they didn't put forth any effort to help. Athena didn't know what to say to them anyway. The ghost was a figment of a time long past. Its origins traced farther back than Athena's induction into the Daughters of Hecate, even. It was so wrapped up in her past that there was no way to clarify it to her fellow Daughters cleanly and precisely. There were no words for the vitriol or the fear that the ghost inspired in Athena, at least none in the common tongue. Perhaps in the language of her original tribe could she find the words, but she had long forgotten most of the Twisted Hair dialect that had once been her only means of communication. All she could say was that she felt terrible things were about to happen.

She was correct in her predictions of bad news. Once she sobered up and felt safe to leave the bunker, she returned to the Goddess' pyramid. There she discovered the most terrifying truth she couldn't imagine even with all her feverish predictions, despite how obvious it was in retrospect. She was stone-cold sober, so she could no longer blame the appearance of the ghost, the demon of her past, on drugs or visions. There it was, idly reclining in the main hall of the pyramid. She was older, obviously. Her hair was no longer in the style of their former tribe and her back was covered in hideous, unfamiliar scars, but her face was painted like a Daughter's, and she still had that unappealing air of cool aloofness.

"Arama," Athena spoke the name like a curse, and the corners of her mouth contorted with rage, "Arama lives?"


	37. Y-3

Y-3

Julia watched the clear solution crawl steadily up the syringe. She carefully measured out the dose, a recreational hit of med-x. Nothing that would completely kill her nerves but it would certainly take the edge off. A little bit of fun.

Julia always stayed sober on assignment, but whenever she returned she couldn't help but indulge a little, even though she still had her responsibilities in Ouroboros. She pushed the needle into the soft flesh of her underarm and pressed the plunger, letting the med-x and saline flow into her bloodstream. It took a moment to let the feeling wash over her body, that slightly tingly feeling of floating, of being and not being.

She didn't quite know what she was supposed to do today, so she was ducking the Goddess and avoiding new assignments. She had hid in a small tin shack near the edge of Ouroboros to shoot up, her private room where she couldn't be disturbed because no-one cared about a rotting scrap shack. She retreated to the shack but she never slept there, instead whenever she spent time back among the flock she'd find empty beds wherever they were to be found and kept her personal belongings in a locker at the armory. She kept nothing in her private space because it couldn't be locked and she had no way of knowing whether she was sharing the space with anyone else. But it was a good place to shoot up, to sit and think.

But then again, thinking was overrated, Julia decided. She lit out for the Maenad bar, a half-sunk one story building nestled cozily between the Daughter's barracks and the school. Julia wound her way through the smoky tables to the back corner booth, her favorite spot and furthest from the door. She got a glass of water and sat among the low murmur of the other Maenads relaxing in their downtime.

Outside, Athena had been watching. She knew it was only a matter of time before Arama visited the Maenad bar. She staked out a good vantage point and waited, waited until she could catch the person she hated and feared most. She followed Julia in.

Julia didn't even notice Athena follow her, didn't notice Athena search the dark room for her. She was content to stew in her opiate haze, in one of the few places she felt comfortable enough to not watch her surroundings like a hawk. She was taken by surprise when Athena sat across from her but she was not perturbed. They looked at each other for a moment, Julia searching the woman in front of her for clues to her identity, Athena seething with hatred and steeling herself to speak. Eventually Julia recognized her.

"Athena, right?" Julia asked languidly. She remembered Athena from the Twisted Hairs, but had never known her enough to know anything else about her. If she had been more present Julia may have asked Athena how she survived the Legion's betrayal, or how she had also come to follow Hecate, but as she was Julia simply wondered why Athena was bothering her at all. She got her answer soon enough.

"I don't know what you think you're doing here," Athena hissed, "The Goddess must not know what you did or otherwise She'd cast you out, curse you with the plague you deserve. You make me sick, playing Her loyal servant when all you are is a traitor. You should be ashamed, you should be ashamed Arama. I don't even know how you can live with yourself, live with the choices you have made. I'm going to give you the opportunity to tell Her yourself, let Her know what you did to us, let Her know what kind of vile serpent She's invited into Her Daughters. I'm going to let you tell Her because I cannot hurt Her like you do every day you claim to love Her. But if you don't tell Her, Arama, you can be assured that I will tell Her, I will let Her know because you cannot do this, I cannot let you get away with this you nodriza de la maii!-"

With one serpentine motion Julia slipped an errant finger into Athena's collar and used it to slam her head down on the table. In her other hand she seemingly conjured a revolver from nowhere, actually from under the table, and pressed it to Athena's temple. She smiled.

"Do you know why this bar is Maenad-only, Athena? It's because when the Goddess founded Ouroboros she discovered this building had a separate water system. Because she could never find its source, the taps only pour dirty water. But Maenads have a purifier installed, standard," she ran the iron sight of the gun barrel up and down her throat, while clutching Athena's collar tightly with her other hand and pulling it back, so that it bit into Athena's neck and choked her a little, "so unlike the Sibyls, or," she spit the word, "_Harpies_, we don't have to worry about whether the water is clean or not."

"If you can, from your disadvantaged viewpoint, look around us," Julia gestured at the rest of the bar with the revolver, its other patrons ignoring the loud drama of the back corner booth, "Do you see if anyone cares? Do you think they'd start if I blew your brains all over this table?"

Julia angrily shook Athena's collar as she pronounced each word, "Let's get this clear. I am operating on a completely different plain, and I don't play games with my inferiors. By all means, if you can even get an audience with the Goddess, tell her. Maybe she'll even believe you, just a little, if I don't deny it," she released Athena's collar.

"I'm glad we had this chat," Athena felt the cold steel of the gun lift off her temple as Julia got up to leave, "If you ever bother me again I'll kill you."

She sashayed out of the room, her long skirt flowing behind her. Athena waited a bit longer, resting her head on the flat, indifferent surface of the table.


	38. Conspiracy of Women

Conspiracy of Women

The interrogation yielded greater results than Scipio Venator could've hoped for. Ruth was conflicted, she had all but abandoned the Goddess Hecate for the Goddess Diana and now it seemed she in turn had been abandoned. Diana was gone, and so were the Twin Mothers. Helea, Ruth's closest confidant and ally was dead, killed by Legionaries in the worst way possible. It was just her, alone, against this Centurion and his guard.

She had no love for the Legion, but she had less hate for them than a Daughter would be expected to. Unlike her peers she had never been personally attacked by the Legion; their seemingly omnipresent antagonization of the southwest wasteland didn't include her people. It helped that Ruth and her people were not tribals. She had been born and raised in a vault. She hailed from Vault 27, a vault that was located in southern New Mexico. She had been educated in a traditional school environment, she had been taught gun safety at a shooting range, she knew what ice cream (or a reasonable facsimile) tasted like. She had grown up in a pre-war environment. She knew about the Romans. She may have found Caesar's Legion amusing when she first encountered them, but they did not attack her and she did not attack them. In fact, before joining the Daughters of Hecate she had been hired by the Legion to harass New Mexico settlements. Of course, she'd gotten out of that game before the other foot dropped. The other mercenaries she'd worked with were all enslaved by the Legion, eventually. She had found a better game in Hecate worship, more security and less danger, and so after awhile with the Daughters she adopted an anti-Legion attitude to fit in.

It was bitterly ironic that now that she finally had a real reason to hate the Legion with all her heart she aided them immensely. She was so full of grief and loss she couldn't think straight. She was scared, too, in a way she had never been scared before. She had lead a sheltered life, and she had never felt threatened by anything on the waste. It was as though she had a special force field and nothing could touch her, no matter how dangerous things got. It had not been a strength so much as foolishness and now it fled her on fleet wings.

The presence of the Centurion was terrifying. He was bedecked in bloodstained armor, and had a face like granite rock. Just behind him stood a man easily seven feet tall, bedecked in unusual black-leather Legion armor, the uniqueness of which only made him more intimidating. He had a long scar reaching from his left eyebrow all the way to the back of his head, and his left eye wandered a little, was a little out of synch with his right eye like it was made out of glass. Both men were knotted with scars, and thick with muscle. They smelled awful, the Centurion a bit like motor oil and the Legionary like blood and shit and leather.

She told them everything, everything she knew. She was just a Harpy, so her glimpses into the inner workings of the Daughters was limited, but it was more than enough for Scipio. She told him about Hecate, the mad tribal Goddess. She told him how the Daughters converted tribes to Hecate worship, about their abduction and indoctrination of tribal infants. Two pieces of information intrigued Scipio the most, namely, the Goddess' plan to raise a perfect army, and the location of the Goddess' headquarters.

"A cabal of women, I knew it," he muttered to himself as he left the interrogation room, escorted by Mortuus Anima, "They're trying to undermine us all, M. I've known for a long time," he continued to mutter, his validation only worsening his paranoia, "Decanus, follow me."

He lead Mortuus into a room covered in pictures and notes. Their were grainy, dirt-covered photographs and drawings of women, women with Centurions and women being held captive, women with elaborate face paintings. There were sketches, endless sketches of a black dot; of a snake eating its own tail.

"See here, scout report on Hangdog tribe," he held up an official report, "One year later, a half-cohort of Centurions Venator, Crassus, Magnus, and Ursus subdue the tribe, wash ritual face paint from captured Hangdogs. Scout report does not mention tribal face paint!"

"Official license of wedding," he violently snatched a folder and held it up to Mortuus' face, "Between Centurion Crassus Arma of Two Suns and daughter of the First Mesa village mayor. Two months later, Centurion Crassus is found dead of apparent rad poisoning, wife is nowhere to be found!"

Mortuus did not see the connection, and did not understand what was wrong, but assumed it all had to do with 'Hecate' and 'Ouroboros.' As near as he could tell it would be perfectly normal for scouts to not report insignificant details and for a Centurion's wife to inexplicably disappear. It was a well-known rumor that Aurelius of Phoenix likely ate his first wife. Yet something about the documents drove Centurion Venator into a fury. He continued to rant and throw ledgers about, furious in his triumph. His eye started to twitch. Mortuus said nothing, as it was not his place to interrupt his Centurion.

Abruptly Venator stopped. He rested his hands on the table and stared furiously at his carefully gathered and compiled evidence towards a conspiracy, a conspiracy against the Legion by a cabal of face-painted and beautiful women. He had been researching quietly for years, and it had all come to this moment. He slowly looked at his Decanus, his pariah Decanus with the non-regulation apparel and massive stature.

"Gather the Decanus. We march for Ouroboros."


	39. Strophades

Strophades

The details came quickly. The Daughters had been betrayed, that much was obvious. The valley which Ouroboros occupied was accessible through a few ways, all of which were guarded but none moreso than the route the Harpies were given to enter.

It was at this entrance that Scipio Venator and his centuria attacked. It was a bloodbath. The Hounds were caught unaware, swarmed by superior numbers despite their superior firepower. Hound Captain Jordan Dae was cut down by no less than an entire contubernia attacking him at once, but before he was killed he managed to send word of the attack back to Ouroboros.

"They've penetrated the first defense," Sibyl Yvana reported, "Strophades corridor is compromised. Captain Dae is killed in action," she concluded, crestfallen.

"Order the main guard out to Strophades checkpoint three, tripletime," Julia commanded, "Get a contingent of Maenads supporting them. Wait for further orders from the Goddess."

She turned on her heal and left the Sibyl control center. She entered the private chambers of the Goddess unannounced as was her privilege and filled her in on the details including her response. The Goddess was stunned. For more than a decade she had maintained authority over the southwest wasteland and Caesar's puissant Legion without so much as condemnation and new she faced her first Legion attack since the betrayal of the Twisted Hairs.

As Julia waited for her Goddess to respond, Hecate's head filled with Dark Mother's visions. The Legion standard over a thick black cloud of smoke, the smell of burning tires so thick in the air she could choke on it. They severed limbs from her tribespeople, left a whole pile of arms and legs that quickly attracted a swarm of bloatflies.

She remembered the man with a coyote's head. The devil the Legion rode with. He tore whole warriors limb from limb, strong men who knew battle like the bloatflies knew the bodies of her tribe's slain. The coyote with the body of a man tore them into fat bloody chunks. Who could fight a force allied with old coyote himself? The stench of death, the stench left by the death of the Twisted Hairs flooded Hecate's nose and she was unable to lead.

Meanwhile, Mortuus Anima led the charge of Venator's centuria, a Legion standard strapped to his back and a roaring chainsaw in his hands.

"Caesar Enim! Enim Legion!" he screamed at the Legionaries, ushering them onward into battle for the glory and benefit of Caesar. It was ironic, considering Centurion Venator had gone AWOL to attack Ouroboros, and Mortuus and the Legionaries who followed him through the winding corridor were no longer part of the Legion or owned by Caesar as a result. Although they still fought for the benefit of Caesar they no longer had his blessing, as no amount of convincing on Scipio Venator's part could convince Caesar or his Legate that the Daughters of Hecate and Hecate worshippers in general were a threat to the Legion, at least not enough of a threat to expend the resources of an entire centuria.

Venator didn't even bother to tell him. He knew Caesar would be too short-sighted, would underestimate the threat presented by the Hecate worshippers. He would make an effort to stamp it out where he saw it, certainly, as he stamped out all non-Legion ideologies in the southwest wasteland. He wouldn't see the organization or the dangerous efficiency of the creed and its believers.

Venator knew he could never go back. It didn't matter. He would save Caesar and the Legion even if it meant damning himself and his men, even if it meant turning away from Mars' embrace.

Julia noticed her Goddess' hesitation, even if she didn't understand it. She knew it was no time to get lost in thought, not aware of the dread visions that fueled Hecate's paralysis. The Legion would be advancing to the second checkpoint in a matter of minutes, and inaction could mean the death of Hecate and all her Daughters.

"I'm going to transfer Hounds from other checkpoints to Strophades checkpoint three, and mobilize Ouroboros proper," she informed Hecate. The Goddess could only nod in shock. Julia had her approval and returned to the Sibyl control center to give her commands.

"W-where are you going?" Yvana asked Julia after receiving the orders, tears now streaming down her face for her departed Captain Dae.

"I'm suiting up and I'm getting out there. Keep me posted over the shortwave, on the special channel," Julia grabbed a radio and walked briskly to the armory, where she encountered Bella, the new leader of her old Maenad team.

"What's the word? Shortwave is blowing up," she asked.

"Right now a centuria of Legionaries are killing our Hounds at Strophades checkpoint two, while checkpoint three is getting reinforcements. We don't know if this is part of a bigger assault yet, but it doesn't look like it. Help me get my armor on, then tell your team to suit up and take defensive positions, then meet me on the promontory," Julia dressed quickly, practiced at taking her body armor on and off.

The Strophades corridor was the most tactically defensible entryway into the Valley of Hecate. It was a narrow, winding corridor that opened in to a flat, vast plain, the entirety of which could be viewed from the promontory, a tall rock jutting out of the ground at a low angle. Julia climbed its gentle slope and positioned herself with The Lady. Nothing could broach the valley from Strophades and escape her or her .50 caliber rifle. She was soon joined by Bella, who had brought her hunting Winchester.

"Second checkpoint has withdrawn to the third, which is at triple strength. There aren't any attacks at any other entrance, so it looks like it's just the one group," Julia filled Bella in.

"I can't believe we didn't see this coming," Bella mused anxiously. A long, greasy strand of blonde hair fell in front of her face, and she brushed it back and put her Kossuth hat with all the animal teeth in the brim back on. Unlike Julia's authoritarian, pre-war Hopeville riot armor, Bella wore light hunting apparel. Unlike Julia's thick, armored jacket Bella's duster was sewn together from the leather of animals she'd killed and skinned herself.

Belladonna Fiasco of the Fiasco family, as she was called where she came from, was once the premier hunter of a family of hunters in a small Arizona town. When she became a Hecate worshipper she claimed she had fled the Legion because they were trying to enslave her, but the truth was her town had capitulated to Legion rule without incident. She had actually helped teach the Legion's explorers better survival skills in exchange for Legion coin. She had only left when the Legion explorer corps muscled her out of her hunting contracts and off her hunting grounds- using the skills she had taught them, of course. She had served as tracker in Julia's Maenad team before replacing her as captain.

"If anyone makes it through, we'll pick them off," Julia shrugged off Bella's apprehension, trying to shake her own apprehension at the Goddess' less-than-assuring or leader-like response to the Legion attack, "_If _any Legion make it through," she repeated. She grit her teeth and peered through The Lady's scope.

"_If anyone makes it through._"


	40. Sinnerman

Sinnerman

Mortuus pumped his legs harder and faster than he ever had before in his life. The Legion standard had been ripped from his back, his hat had been carried away by the wind. He couldn't tell if the blood he felt on his forehead was his or one of his victim's. He couldn't tell if any of the blood he was soaked in was his. He didn't care.

He didn't know if anyone had followed him through. The second defense had not fallen as quickly as the first, but Mortuus had been on the heels of the retreating defenders all the way to the third. He had ceased to feel, he had ceased to think. The chainsaw was not the most efficient weapon he'd ever used, but it set a standard for the battle that made the Hecate-worshipping defenders intimidated. Mortuus had almost been shot several times in the process of grinding through enemy sternums, but whenever he felt a gun barrel point his way he would simply look at the gunman and roar. Covered in ruby viscera and with eyes full of pure fury, Mortuus' roar couldn't even be heard over his chainsaw but it didn't matter, they all flinched away. He cut a straight path through the third defense and pushed through. He thought Legionaries had followed him, but none broke ranks. They were down to only a little more than thirty men. Mortuus ran alone.

He now understood the threat the Daughters of Hecate posed. In fighting them he realized that they were not just individual women preaching to tribes, they were a full-fledged military force. Their tactics were too good, their soldiers too disciplined, and their weapons were in too good of shape to not be considered a threat, and yet the Legion had absolutely no knowledge of them. Somewhere around the second defense the Dead Soul had realized that this wasn't just the wild paranoia of an unhinged centurion, that the outcome of this battle would likely determine the fate of the Legion and the entire southwest wasteland. So he fought, he fought like he had never fought before. He stopped thinking and feeling, because he knew if he let himself think or feel he would feel that this was a battle neither he nor the Legion was going to win. He ran, and when he heard a rifle's retort he only ran faster.

"Shit!" Bella's shot went way wild, well off its mark. She was jittery. She knew who this man was. She knew of the Dead Soul.

"He's too far away. Let him get closer to us," Julia chided dully. She had withdrawn behind Bella as soon as she scoped the Legionary who had broken through the third checkpoint. She recognized him immediately, his black leather and his dark, empty eyes. She recognized her only brother. She withdrew calmly and precisely, left her gun to rest on the rocks and sat back. She pulled out a syringe full of med-x.

"The Dead Soul!" Bella took another shot that had no chance of hitting him, "Fuck!"

"Relax, you aren't compensating for the wind enough," Julia placidly corrected Bella's sniping. She sat cross-legged and took deep, measured breaths as she pulled her arm out of her sleeve. She pulled the cap off the med-x with her teeth.

"He's massive! He's like a human deathclaw!" Bella fired another shot, "Fuck!"

"He's not going to make it to Ouroboros," Julia didn't even look up as she spoke, focused intently on inserting the needle into her vein. She injected the med-x in one steady, even dosage.

"He could still reach us! I don't want that happening!" Bella had completely lost her cool. The calmer Julia was, the more nervous it made her. She had never seen Julia act so blasé in a combat situation, even when it was low-risk. The Julia Bella knew took all combat threats seriously and handled them professionally and with appropriate force. She would never sit away from her rifle and disconnect when there was a clear and present threat. Hell, Julia always relished the opportunity to kill. If this had been one of their missions when Julia was captain, they would've engaged in a contest to see who could kill their target the fastest.

Yet here was Julia abdicating and leaving the target entirely to Bella, so she could shoot up no less. That scared Bella more than the Dead Soul, fabled warrior of the Legion. It wasn't that he was seven feet tall, that he was splattered with the blood of her allies, that he was moving faster than she could believe, that somehow even with the wind she could hear the revving of his chainsaw, it was that for the first time ever Julia Aram was hesitant to kill someone. She didn't know what that said about Mortuus Anima, but she knew it was enough to get scared. She fired another desperate shot.

"Deep breaths, Bella," Julia said in her unnerving monotone. She sounded distant, disaffected. She finished the shot, put the cap back on the empty syringe, and put it back in her coat, all very methodically and cool. She put her arm back in her sleeve and sat for a moment, meditating, letting the med-x flow through her.

"Will you fucking help me!" Bella yelled at her, exasperated. She was almost in tears at Julia's impassivity, unable to understand what was happening as Mortuus drew closer. She didn't know it, but the battle was over. There was only one Legionary left alive and he was running at them with superhuman speed, carrying a chainsaw.

Julia looked at her with empty, glassy eyes. Bella was shaken to the core by Julia's dead stare. She would never forget that look as long as she lived.

Julia sat up and reclaimed her gun. She peered down the scope, relocating her brother. She looked away from the scope, away from her target, and looked again into Bella's terrified eyes. She stared coldly at Bella and fired. Her rifle made a sharp crack that the wind carried away. She stood up, and slung The Lady over her shoulder. She did not look away from Bella.

"See? It wasn't so hard," she said without emotion. She turned around and gently ambled down the promontory.

In the middle of the sun-scorched plain, among the dead grass and skeletal shrubbery was Mortuus Anima. The Dead Soul's headless body was splayed wide open on the hard dry earth, the concussive blast of the .50 caliber bullet which burst his skull like a ripe mutfruit having knocked his corpse a full three feet backwards.


	41. Broken Nose

Broken Nose

Arama made her way carefully over the rocks that clambered over each other in their bid to be swallowed by the Colorado. Just past them was a smooth, flat beach where she could play in peace. The deceptively placid river flowed past her; a simple miscalculation in her footing and she would fall in and be swept away. Tied to her waist was a knife, which slapped against her bare thigh as the river roared in her ears.

She arrived at the beach and set about digging fervently with her bare hands into the wet sand. Buried shallowly within the damp soil was a filthy toy rocketship. When she unearthed the toy Arama clutched it reassuringly to her breast. She re-established herself at the beach, using her knife to cut crude yet expansive designs. She made intricate mandalas gouged into the wet earth, a complex geometry which defined imaginary landscapes and boundaries.

She played with her rocketship, pretending that it was flying all over the world with a crew of four, represented by rocks that she gathered. She picked the rocks for their distinctive shapes and named them. There was Dum-Dum the cook, Bruce the pilot, Merica the captain, and Chandy the gunner. Dum-Dum, Bruce, and Merica were all ladies, Chandy was the only boy. He stayed in his room in the spaceship while the ladies ate and cleaned and flew the rocket ship. When the ship encountered enemies Chandy would leave his room to man the weapons and then immediately returned to his room. Dum-Dum and Bruce were in a relationship, but Merica came between them, causing friction in the ship.

Occasionally the throaty ribbit of a gecko could be heard, but Arama wasn't scared. The tribe had lived alongside the geckos for generations, and in many ways the geckos reminded her of her own people. They were violent and pigeonholing, prone to attacking each other at perceived insults and to perpetuate the informal hierarchy. Both had primitive societies born from necessity. Much like an errant geppy, if Arama were discovered so far from home she would be smacked resoundingly and dragged back, but all for her own safety. The wasteland was brutal and demanded brutality in turn.

Arama's rocketship came under attack from unseen but aggressive enemies. Chandy valiantly sacrificed himself to save the rest of the crew, and they mourned his passing appropriately, with a traditional Twisted Hair funeral. Playtime was over. If she was gone too long, her absence would be noted and her grandfather would despatch searchers. If she didn't limit her time in her secret space, it would be discovered and she'd never be able to return again. She hated her grandfather.

She hated the other children of the Twisted Hairs, too. After she buried her rocketship and obscured her markings she returned to the tribe. She slipped past the camp guards with ease, well-practiced at eluding authority despite her young age. She similarly eluded the women who watched the children. They marshaled the tribe's young into the meeting circle in the center of the village every day, for safety and convenience. None of the other children had noticed Arama's absence, and she quietly hoped they would not notice her now that she returned. She spent most of her time trying to be inconspicuous, which was always interpreted as an invitation for harassment.

Her peer Big-Nose noticed her efforts to make herself smaller. He was large for his age, but dumb. Whenever he saw Arama the unnamed he felt confusing feelings. He felt like he liked her a lot, but he also hated her a lot. He was jealous of her, of how smart she was, of how pretty she was. He felt like he was unworthy of her attention. He decided to make himself feel less inferior by insulting her.

"Hey 'Rama, why don't you have any friends? Is it because you're smelly?" even if she weren't crouched on the ground, hugging her knees and trying to sink into the earth Big-Nose would have towered over her by nearly a foot. There was only one boy in the tribe aged eight who was taller than him and that child was certainly not Arama, who was uncommonly small for her age. She tried to ignore him.

"Yeah, is it because you're stuck-up?" a young girl named Paayu-hoya added her own criticism to Big-Nose's goading. She personally disliked Arama, interpreting her aloofness as snobbishness, but she and Big-Nose were soon joined by plenty of other kids who had no personal motivations. They were simply seizing the opportunity to gang up on someone smaller and weaker, a pastime common of children everywhere.

Arama, to her credit tried to ignore the childish taunts, but they soon became overwhelming. She stood up, looked Big-Nose in the eyes, and said, "Shut up."

Big-Nose pushed her into the dirt. The other children laughed but Arama was on her feet quickly, too fast for Big-Nose to block her swing. If it weren't for the rock clutched tight in her fist he wouldn't have even flinched, but as it was he fell to the ground with blood pouring from his nose. Arama took the opportunity and pounced on him, smacking him in the face again with the rock. She raised her fist to do it again but was restrained by a calloused, elderly hand.

"Fuck me with a knife, where'd she even get the rock!" her grandfather Harpy swore. He lifted his wayward granddaughter by the wrist bodily off of her bloodied and weeping victim and pulled the bloody stone from her fist, "You!" he barked at one of the young women tasked with watching the children, "Take her away!"

"I will talk to you later," he harshly addressed Arama.

Bitter Wind dragged the girl away from the other children. The elder's granddaughter always seemed to be the center of every problem among the tribe's young. Arama did not react at all, letting Bitter Wind drag her through the village by the hand without protest or even acknowledgement.

"I'm not dealing with you! We will find someone who will," Bitter Wind sighed, irritated. She had more things on her mind than taking care of the elder's spoiled granddaughter. She privately assured herself she would not allow her own children to behave so poorly.

They came upon Dark Mother's tent, a ramshackle yurt made of scraps of tarp and discarded hides on the edge of the village. Dark Mother was ostensibly the tribe's herbalist and healer, but that did not afford her much respect. Mostly she was shunned, which made her a perfect caretaker for the pariah child. Bitter Wind told Arama to wait outside the tent and then entered.

"Dark Mother, are you busy?" the inside of Dark Mother's hovel was smoke-filled from burning incense and leaves. The smell was overpowering, but could not entirely mask the scent of death and decay which hung over the woman. There were plenty of rumors that Dark Mother was a witch, and entering her tent, where small bones tied to the ceiling dangled at eye-level and smoke obscured everything besides, Bitter Wind could not help but feel there was truth to the rumors.

"I am not busy," Dark Mother replied slowly and after a long pause from her position on the floor. Bitter Wind couldn't tell if she was looking at her or not.

"Will you look after the nameless child? The granddaughter of elder Harpy? I have too many things to do or I would do it," Bitter Wind asked. It took a few moments again for Dark Mother to reply.

"I will watch the nameless child," Dark Mother answered. Bitter Wind dragged Arama into the tent and without so much as a goodbye was gone.

Arama took a seat on the floor next to Dark Mother. The yurt was less smokey closer to the ground, and her eyes stung less. Dark Mother did not look at Arama, and for nearly an hour they sat in silence. Arama liked Dark Mother. Unlike the other women of the tribe Dark Mother did not belittle her or chastise her, did not try to make her do work. Dark Mother simply sat with her, and even though it was boring it was calming. It did not take long for Arama to begin to fidget, though.

Dark Mother looked over at her with dull surprise, as though for the past forty minutes she had not acknowledged Arama because she did not realize Arama was there. Her movements were very slow, and she stared appraisingly at Arama for several minutes.

"You are the nameless one," she said.

"No, I'm Arama. My grandfather's Aram Harpy," Arama explained patiently to Dark Mother. Sometimes Dark Mother forgot things and had to be reminded, Arama knew. She stayed in the tent with Dark Mother for the rest of the afternoon, until her grandfather came to get her. He took her home, to his slightly more permanent and much nicer home made of clay.

Arama was not happy to be home with her grandfather. Her heart fluttered, scared of what he would say or do to her, but she swallowed her fear. He crouched down to her level, looking at her straight in the eye. He opened his palm, revealing that he still had the stone she had used to attack Big-Nose. Earlier in the day she had named it Merica, and now it was stained with the blood of her attacker.

"Do you see this?" he asked her. She nodded her head. He smacked her on the cheek with the rock, not as hard as he could have, but hard enough that it would leave a bruise. She looked back into his eyes with burning hatred.

"I know what it feels like to get hit with a rock," she said, small and defiant. He smacked her again, much harder, with the back of his palm.

"You will learn respect! You will learn obedience!" he roared. He was out of practice at disciplining a child, and Arama was much more difficult than her father. He had to resort to his most severe punishment earlier and more often with her, "You will go in the box until you are ready to apologize and be a good girl!"

He dragged her to an old wood cabinet, a pre-war relic, and locked her inside. She did not resist but as he shut the door he looked into her eyes like two small suns of fury and loathing.

Once she knew her grandfather was out of earshot Arama sobbed. She cried for hours, desperate choking sobs and a stream of tears that could not be wiped away no matter how hard she tried. Eventually she could cry no more.

After darkness fell the door of the cabinet opened.

"Hey 'Rama," said Heart. He could tell his little sister had been crying. He knew she cried a lot, and it always made him miserable. He wished his sister was happier. "I brought you some food."

He handed her some gecko meat and flatbread. Arama didn't realize how hungry she was until she devoured it all. She had missed lunch by escaping to the beach and she had missed dinner because she was locked in a cabinet.

"I was hunting today, with Raven and Xon and Kwey. We killed a pronghorn. Grandpa was proud," Heart added, embarrassed but proud. He could not help bragging, even though he did not want to rub it in that he was their grandfather's clear favorite. "I heard you beat up Big-Nose today. He looked pretty bad when I saw him."

"They'll have to change his name to Broke-Nose now," Arama joked proudly. Heart smiled but it was a sad smile.

"I wish you wouldn't get in so much trouble," he told her, "I wish you were sleeping in our room tonight. If anybody is mean to you, I'll beat them up, okay? Don't beat them up and get in trouble anymore. I'll take care of it," tears welled in his eyes. Arama could see them. She wished she could fit in with the rest of the tribe like he did. She wished she wouldn't have to defend herself so often, not for her own sake but for her brother's. He was maybe the only person in the whole tribe who actually cared about her, and she knew it made him sad that she was sad. That hurt more than all the rocks in the world. She felt like she was about to cry again.

"Okay Heart. I won't get in trouble any more," she said quietly. Heart hugged her and said goodnight, then closed the cabinet door and went to bed. Arama laid awake for awhile longer, resting her head on the cabinet wall and clutching herself tightly, trying to keep her brother's hug all through the night.


	42. A True Daughter

A True Daughter

Atia's son Julius was delicate. Almost from the moment of his birth he was sickly and fragile. Had he been born under the Legion's banner he would have been exposed, left to die in the open. The Legion had no compassion for the feeble nor the capacity to care for them.

Atia thought she would be relieved, even happy at her son's birth. She had defied the Legion, the elements, and a Goddess to give birth to her child; yet once he was born she wanted nothing to do with him. In her mind he became a tumor, a sickness that had been removed surgically and precisely, and once removed requiring little more than quick disposal. In many ways he was a physical manifestation of her time among the Legion, much like her periodic nightmares were the mental reminders of her slavery, dreams from which she could not escape.

She hated the Legion, she wanted to deny the Legion part of her as much as possible, and yet there it was with ten fingers and ten toes staring into her eyes with the eyes of the men who abused her for a decade. Every time she stared into his eyes, those innocent gray eyes she wanted to throw up. It was a great relief to her when Julius began to have seizures just a few days after his birth. The Daughters assured her that he would be alright, preemptively tried to calm her down, but in truth she was relieved that he was being taken away from her to be placed under intensive care. She secretly wished he'd never come back.

He was gone for two weeks. In those two weeks she tried to distract herself as much as possible. She pledged herself to the Goddess Hecate, smoking the ritual bufo, drinking ritual alcohol, and given her face paint pattern. She was given the rank of Sibyl and with it the job of record-keeping. It was not unlike her old responsibilities with the Legion, organizing and storing data, although unlike the Legion occasionally she was required to file information on a computer. Among the Legion computers were ripped apart so their gold could be harvested and melted down to coins. Although she was slightly uncomfortable working at a computer, she found comfort among the many rows of old binders and log-books. Once again she found herself inside the heart of a powerful society, and it was as though the books and binders that rested within this heart pulsed with the beat of her own organ. She felt at peace.

At the end of the two weeks Atia was informed that her son needed more care, and would be retained by the intensive care ward for at least another two weeks. She was ashamed at how relieved she felt. She retreated further into the culture of hedonism which pervaded Ouroboros. Two weeks went by, then another two weeks. The Daughters came to Atia again and again, delaying the return of her son, citing medical reasons. She slipped away, stopped thinking about Julius except on those rare occasions when a very serious and stentorian Daughter would visit her and update her on his progress.

Near the end of one night of hedonism, while they reclined in the baths and shared a hookah, Julia confronted Atia about her son.

"Y'know they aren't going to give him back to you unless you want him back," she said after blowing out a billowing cloud of smoke, "He probably isn't even in the ICU anymore," she said to the intricately tiled walls of the beautiful temple baths.

Atia was taken aback, but she was too high to feel the shock for long. Julia handed her the hose of the hookah and she bit down on the mouthpiece as she inhaled. By then it had been four months since her son was born. Her son was four months old and she hadn't even bothered to visit him. She blew out the pangs of guilt with the smoke. She remained silent, staring at the tiles and trying to form cohesive thoughts.

Julia reclined on the edge of the bath. "That's the way they do things around here," she lazily drawled, soporific from the night's excesses, "If you were a true Daughter you'd be conditioned to just let him go," she said mockingly, "If you were a true Daughter you wouldn't have had him at all."

"The Goddess doesn't want anything so petty as family ties to drag her perfect army down," Julia continued bitterly, swirling the warm water with her hand, "Fealty to the family only impedes fealty to the Goddess. Love for the family only obstructs love for the Goddess. And then there's the practical element, that your basic worshippers aren't as equipped to educate and train the children as the priestesses chosen by the Goddess. It's a more efficient system, I see that."

Atia listened to Julia's drunken soliloquy with a growing sense of unease. What beast had she sacrificed her son to? What world had she immersed herself in? She felt something grow in her, something that had never before been a part of her. She had chosen this place, she had decided to come to Ouroboros and worship Hecate. She had never had agency over her own life, had never had the privilege to make choices for herself before. Something was growing inside her, a sense of responsibility. Her life was her own now, and the duty to make the right choices was her's and her's alone. She thought of her son, a life that she had brought into the world, a life completely helpless and without the authority of independence that was still new to Atia herself.

In the morning she forgot her conversation with Julia, but a sick feeling sat in her stomach. It stuck with her through the entire day, a nagging tug which pulled her towards something she feared more than anything else. After she was done tending to the Hall of Records, she visited her son for the first time in the ICU.

He looked small. She hadn't seen him in so long, she assumed he would be bigger. He smiled at her. The doctors assured her he was a healthy weight, despite his health. They informed Atia that Julius was having breathing problems, and although they were treatable they didn't have the resources to treat them outside the medical center.

Julia also woke up feeling sick. Unlike Atia she remembered their conversation the night before, and felt awful about the things she'd said. They had been candid and true, admittedly, but also insensitive and cruel. She had betrayed her own bitter hubris in a moment of inebriation. She didn't know what she would say to Atia the next time she saw her. Fortunately for Julia, Atia began talking to her as soon as they met again.

Atia admitted to visiting her son. Julius was still infirm, only now the seizures had receded and were replaced by sputtering choking breathing fits, the sound of which nearly drove Atia into grieving hysterics.

"He sounded so awful, wheezing like that," Atia cried to Julia, "I didn't know what to do. I don't know what to do."

After Atia left Julia visited Julius in the ICU. She was filled in by the doctors on what was wrong. They admitted that the Goddess likely had the resources to allow Julius to leave the ICU, but considering his status as a blasphemous birth and his mother's apparent disdain for him they hadn't bothered to petition the Goddess for the supplies.

"Personally, we've considered just letting it die," confessed Gillian, back at Ouroboros from assignment with Bella and the other Maenads. Although Julia had relinquished command of her old team in favor of her position as Hecate's' high priestess, she still talked with her old team whenever they were in town, "I mean, it's clearly inferior to the proper children of the Goddess."

Julia was taken aback, not just by the callousness of her long-time ally, but also how Gillian's casual lack of compassion reflected her own. She had long been convinced that the Daughters were the only hope for the southwest wasteland, but she had to admit that when encountering anything that didn't fit their dogma the Daughters could be extremely ruthless.

Atia took a night to sober up, taking her first steps towards maturity when she was visited by Julia.

"I want you to take your son out of the ICU," she told Atia conspiratorially, "and the next time he has breathing difficulty, give him this," she handed Atia a small cylindrical device that looked not unlike a jet dispenser but which Julia assured her was medicine to help with Julius' breathing, "If you run out, come find me."

Atia didn't know what to say. She felt a lump well in her throat and tears well in her eyes. She asked Julia how she could repay her.

"Just take care of your son," Julia answered.


	43. Let It Bleed

Let It Bleed

Athena had never seen Ouroboros so shaken. For as long as she had known of it, Ouroboros was an oasis, separated from the wasteland by geography, politics, and deception, a bastion of culture and immune to the dangerously volatile conditions of the wasteland. For more than a decade it had been untouchable.

She was honestly surprised at how prepared Ouroboros was for attack. As soon as they went on lockdown, she was shuttled behind an already established barricade by a coordinator and given orders to fire at anyone until the all-clear was sent out. She had walked past the barricade every day for a year without realizing it. It dawned on her while she waited with her laser pistol drawn that much of the architecture of Ouroboros was designed for defense. Although she had never been prepped on what to do in the event of an attack it was clear that there was a well-thought-out plan.

What wasn't prepared for, however, was the aftermath. The Goddess had been quietly planning the assault by the Legion for years, building up strength and training her followers how to repel a massive Legion attack. She was confident her machinations would escape the attention of Caesar and his men, but was not so proud as to assume it would always be that way, that there wouldn't be a tipping point eventually. She assumed the Legion would eventually catch wind of her plots and retaliate. She miscalculated, however, in assuming that the tipping point would draw the ire of the entire Legion. For years she'd plotted in secret for the great battle that would decide the course of the southwest wasteland, devising ruthless ways to compensate for the Legion's superior size and unwavering devotion. She believed it would all come to a head in a single massive conflict, with no ambiguity. But this was different.

The bodies collected totaled about one hundred and the estimate was that about fifty had been disintegrated by energy weapons, leaving one hundred and fifty total. A single centuria and their slaves out of hundreds. It left questions needing answers. The Goddess held council in the main hall of Ouroboros' temple. Daughters from all over the wasteland found seats in the gallery or stood on the floor. The Goddess herself took her seat of silken pillows on a raised dais surrounded by incense burners. Her throne at the end of the hall, behind and above a half circle of chairs occupied by her most esteemed priestesses. Although she appeared before her Daughters very rarely, she knew she needed to be among them in this time of crisis.

"She's much smaller than I thought," Soledad, Athena's best friend, was called back from her Utah tribe to participate in the council.

"How large did you think the Goddess was?" Athena whispered back, egging Soledad on "Twenty stories tall?" Admittedly the first thing she noticed when she saw the Goddess was how small Hecate looked.

Soledad chuckled uncomfortably, "Well, maybe. I didn't think she was so... human-sized."

The main hall of the pyramid was packed to the brim with Daughters of all stripes. Some Harpies in the most remote corners of the southwest wasteland could not be in attendance, and many Maenads were attending to more important business, but it was without a doubt the largest congregation of Daughters that Athena had ever seen. She scanned the ranks of women and noted with pleasure that Arama was not in attendance.

As she had spent more time among the Daughters of Ouroboros Athena found her faith in the Goddess shaken by the Goddess' own faith in Arama, now known as Julia. She had discovered that the Goddess had appointed Julia her High Priestess sometime before Athena had been cast out of the Crazy Horns, a discovery which made her blood boil. She had almost abandoned the faith then and there, but two things kept her in Ouroboros. The first was her fear of Julia. She was scared of her. Their encounter in the Maenad bar had cowed Athena taught her just how unhinged Julia had become. The second reason she remained loyal was her fear of the Goddess, which outstripped her fear of Julia by far.

When Athena lived among the Crazy Horns she taught them to fear and worship the Goddess through a variety of means. She preached, she proselytized, and she gave aid all in the name of Hecate, but her efforts all paled in comparison to the Goddess' own demonstrations. The Goddess was perhaps small in stature, but her presence was felt across the wasteland. Before Athena came to the Crazy Horns, a tribe neighboring to the south of Salt Lake received a Daughter carrying the teachings of Hecate.

They were targeted for conversion first as they were the most powerful tribe in the area, extorting other tribes for food and slaves much like Athena's own Twisted Hair tribe had done before the Legion. They were known as the Ichorous and they were strong. A Daughter approached them and was greeted warmly, at first. But soon she began to speak of the Goddess, and the tribe's chieftain, Let-It-Bleed, was insulted. He was warchief of the Great Salt Lakes region, and much of his power derived from the belief that there was no one more powerful than him. And a belief was all it was, as thanks to his skills in battle and intimidation he had successfully aged past his prime and could no longer control the Ichorous through strength alone. His authority had become a con, and belief in the Goddess Hecate was a threat to his power.

His solution was cruel and cunning, although ultimately short-sighted. He sought to make a fool of Hecate's messenger, to denigrate Hecate through her missionary and mock her for not retaliating. Let-It-Bleed betrayed the Daughter he had welcomed in the night. He tied her up and held her prisoner until the morning, when the tribe was awake. He then tied her to a large piece of sheet metal facing south. He invited her to fight back, to show them the full power of the Goddess. He encouraged his tribe to pelt her with rotten food. The Daughter calmly warned him of Hecate's retribution, but did nothing to stop him. Let-It-Bleed laughed.

"Let's see your goddess come find your grave," he boasted half to her and half to his people. He put on a show. He smeared the Daughter's face paint, repainting her face to a comical appearance. He spat on her, he stripped her naked and invited all the men of the tribe to grope her and ejaculate on her naked body. He humiliated her, repeatedly and thoroughly, mocking the Goddess and her authority all the while. She did not beg or plead or cry. She remained stoic and proud and dignified despite her tortures. Let-It-Bleed mutilated her and let her die tied to the sheet metal, facing south towards the Goddess. Before she was gone she said one last thing.

"You have killed the Ichorous," and again the chieftain laughed.

They didn't bother to bury the Daughter. Her mangled corpse was left to rot in the sun. As time went by her body became less a threat from to the Ichorous to the Goddess. The body became the Ichorous' albatross, a reminder of their sins and their shame. Hecate's retribution started slowly at first, too slowly for the tribe to realize what was happening. Animals began dying. Rotting gecko and bighorner corpses littered the plain immediately surrounding the Ichorous. The ground turned to poison. Children started to grow sick, in greater and greater numbers. A pall was cast over the tribe, and it only grew worse and worse. Other tribes began to refuse trade, fearing the deathly specter that haunted them. More and more of the tribe grew ill, with hideous diseases that covered their bodies in oozing pustules. The rotting body of the murdered Daughter took on a menacing appearance as her lips receded and her eyes rotted away. All that was left of her face was a hollow smile, a cruel scarecrow that delighted in the suffering of the men and women who had made her.

Neighboring tribes started to grow sick. In retribution they banded together, and slew the Ichorous who had not yet succumbed. Then the Daughters came, providing vaccines and cures. The Goddess' power had been witnessed, and it was terrifying. All of the Utah tribes knew the story of Let-It-Bleed and the Ichorous well. Even consumed by her hatred of Julia, Athena could not forget it. The body of the slain Daughter was recovered, and given special burial in the valley. Her name was Bao. She was known as Bao-Who-Died-For-The-Goddess.

So Athena could not renounce the Goddess, as Let-It-Bleed had renounced the Goddess and had died covered in boils, knowing his blaspheme had killed everyone he loved. Thinking of the story of the Ichorous again made Athena feel an acute pain in her chest. She thought of the Crazy Horns, but only for a moment, as more than a moment was too painful.

Atia knew nothing of the Goddess' retribution. She knew nothing of the Ichorous or any of the other tribes the Goddess had punished. But she was very familiar with the Legion.

When the order went out to make Ouroboros combat-ready, as a non-combatant she was sealed away with other record-keeping noncombatants in the very back of the hall of records. She was scared but confident that whatever was happening the Daughters could handle it. More than anything she was scared for her son, who was in class with other children his age. Would he understand what was happening?

She and the other record-keepers waited silently for awhile, not knowing what to expect. Someone brought up the question of exactly what was attacking Ouroboros, which inspired a whole range of terrifying guesses, but none more terrifying to Atia than the suggestion that it was a Legion attack.

She had been freed from the Legion for years but she still remembered them well. The cruelty, the misery, the smell of burning garbage and burning flesh. The moans and the screams of the crucified. The innumerable scores and scores of battle-hardened young men and boys marching in step, clashing metal spear on metal shield. The howling battle cries of the blood-mad, desperate for victory and unstoppable. She still saw them in her nightmares. One of the other record-keepers asked her why she was shaking. She couldn't admit it was because of her fear of the Legion.

Her worst fears were confirmed after it was finished. Word spread quickly that the Legion had attacked Ouroboros, although there were conflicting stories on whether they had penetrated the valley or had been stopped at the corridor. At first there was celebration, jubilant exultations of victory against the most hated enemy of the southwest. Atia could not join in the celebration. She voiced her concerns.

"How many attacked? Who was their leader? Are more coming?" she asked again and again and received unsatisfactory answers. Her fear spread like plague among the Daughters, and soon the Goddess was facing a full-scale panic among her devout.

The Goddess called the Victory Council a week after the attack, and a day away from a fear-induced riot. Despite it's upbeat name the Council was full of grim Daughters, scared and uncertain and not ready to pleased with the answers they had been demanding for days. Atia had never seen the Goddess before, although there were paintings and statues dedicated to Hecate all throughout Ouroboros. In the main hall of the temple Hecate was obscured by a thick cloud of incense, and the dais she sat on was shrouded in poor light. Atia wondered if she was really there at all, or whether it was instead an old mannequin trussed up with a huge dreadlocked wig. It made her angry that the Goddess possibly wasn't even bothering to appear at her own Council, to her most dedicated followers. A thought occurred to Atia that perhaps there wasn't even a Goddess at all, that she was an elaborate lie established to enslave the Daughters. Paranoid visions flitted through her mind as she stood on the floor of the temple surrounded by two hundred other women. Atia thought of the most terrifying motives for inventing a false Goddess, and the Victory Council began.


	44. Road to Ouroboros

Road to Ouroboros

Julia let out of Ouroboros with fire at her heels. She had a new drive, and she was more focused than she'd ever been in her life. She had finally dealt with her brother, a showdown that had been inevitable. She had done herself a disservice by not preparing for it, but it had happened and now he was dead and she was alive. Ever since she thought the air tasted amazing. It was as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and a thousand new doors opened all at once.

The Legion attack on Ouroboros left some terrifying questions, and Julia personally went searching for answers. She knew she'd find them at the start of the Centriae's march to the valley of the Goddess.

"We should've left one of them alive," Bella panted when Julia stopped for a break. Julia shot her a nasty look, "Not the Dead Soul, obviously. I mean an easier target. I mean, the guards should have..." she trailed off uncomfortably.

Bella was still shaken by Julia's odd behavior during the attack. Julia seemed to recover quickly, almost too quickly, but Bella was still unsure what had made Julia act so weird and what might set her off again. She'd been on pins and needles ever since.

Julia had brought Bella along to follow the Centuriae's trail in the event that it was obscured by the elements, but for miles the trail was as clean as though it had been paved.

"These tracks," Bella breathed hard during another momentary break a few miles down the trail, "The Legion always leaves a wide trail, but this... it's like they wanted to be followed."

Julia had to agree. Even to the most indiscriminate eye the Centuriae's trail was clear. Deep footprints marching sixteen wide, discarded scraps of leather and cloth, even some of the rocks beside the trail seemed to have been cut into. The Centuriae had made no attempt to conceal their path, in fact to the Daughters it looked like they deliberately made their trail more prominent.

Julia was about to come to a conclusion about the attack when her thoughts were disturbed by a rifle retort and a pain in her thigh. A spray of arterial blood and bone fragment from Julia's left leg splattered the rocks. She whipped around pistol in hand and began firing blindly at the source of the shot while Bella dragged her to cover.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" Julia complained when Bella tried to check her leg, "Two o'clock, they're at two o'clock! Get your rifle out!" she screamed. The auto-inject stimpack strapped to her thigh had already gone into effect, but it wouldn't reset the bone. If anything it just made the job harder, as now muscles were growing back that forced her shattered femur into odd angles. It would hurt immensely if it weren't for the fact that she had already shot up a hit of med-x prior to the shooting.

"Frumentarii!" Bella swore as she glared down her sights, "Here for us?"

"I doubt it," Julia grit her teeth and drew the Lady. Bella dropped a Frumentarius charging their position with an arc wielder in three shots. The assassin in the hills fired some return shots but only hit rock. Julia drew a bead on them through Lady's scope. There were two, not counting the one Bella removed. Assassins, possibly waiting for them? Maybe they were waiting for anyone who tried to follow the Centuriae's trail. But why? Julia thought she knew who they were after, but in order to confirm it she had to finish them off.

Bella didn't give her a chance, though. With the cold, ruthless efficiency of a trained killer Bella sniped the Legionaries with her winchester, a family heirloom of the Fiasco family. She turned to Julia and quipped, "No wind."

"Good," Julia rummaged in the pockets of her coat, "Search their bodies, bring back anything that looks like this," she pulled out a small pewter coin and tossed it to Bella. Bella nodded her head, slung her rifle over her shoulder, and went to search the dead assassins.

Julia sighed and pulled out her bowie knife, a relic from the NCR ranger she'd seduced and killed for her armor. She gripped her leg with her other hand and sliced open her thigh, a clean and precise cut. The knife was sterile, but her gloves weren't, so she was forced to re-align her femur using the blade. When it hurt a little too much she gave herself another dose of med-x. Her leg wasn't perfect, but it was the best she could do in the situation, so when her bone was more-or-less righted, she used another stimpack to seal the cut and tied her leg up with a splint. She finished as Bella returned.

"Here," Bella returned the coin with another like it. The coins were smaller than typical Legion coin, and didn't have any value. Any casual search would miss them. On one there was a design of a hunting dog, sharp nose pointed west. On the other was the same design, but gouged into the pewter was a crude x over the dog. Julia sighed again.

"Alright, this is good news. They weren't here for us. Whoever attacked us, they were after the Centurion who found Ouroboros. Send a crow to the Goddess," she started writing a message on a thin piece of paper, "We need to get a team to make a fake Centuriae trail leading away from Ouroboros."

Bella pulled a raven from inside her jacket and kissed it tenderly on the head. Julia tied the note to it's leg, and Bella sent it away in the direction of the Goddess' ziggurat. "This isn't a trail," Julia said, "This is a road. They made a road, right to us."


	45. Hero of the Legion

Hero of the Legion

The Goddess enigmatically refused to answer any questions at the Victory Council. There were many questions levied at her, but they were all intercepted by her priestesses or ignored outright. It seemed as though she was waiting for something, determining the right moment to speak or anticipating the question she wanted to answer above all others.

Her priestesses kept the crowd calm, answering most questions with the information the Goddess had provided them with. The attack was a single centuriae. There will likely be no more attacks. Ouroboros will not need to relocate. The Goddess knew it would happen and had previously taken steps to contain it. No, Caesar doesn't know about Hecate or her power. Finally the question the Goddess had been waiting for came.

"Will we retaliate?" Once the matter of Ouroboros' and the Daughters' safety was resolved, it was only natural for the Daughters to move on to vengeance. A priestess unwisely attempted to answer after a moment's silence but the Goddess quieted her with a simple gesture.

"Shouldn't we take the fight to them? This is an act of aggression. What are you saying by not killing a hundred legionaries for every one of our dead?!" the Daughter continued, growing indignant. It was Sibyl Yvana, still grieving over the loss of the guard captain. The Goddess was fascinated by her outburst of emotion. The Goddess knew very few of her followers personally, but she knew all of them from dossiers she kept. She had long seen her followers as abstract concepts, the way she observed much of the wasteland. For so long she had seen Yvana and her sisters as a collection of data and reports, and now to be confronted by a living breathing person with thoughts and feelings made the Goddess bemused. She did not dwell on her detachment long before beginning her speech.

"The man who lead the attack on Ouroboros was a Centurion named Scipio Venator, and he is the greatest hero the Legion has ever known," her voice echoed through the hall, stunning the Daughters into silence. Hecate had established a PA system for just such an occasion. It wouldn't fool any Daughters from vaults, but Daughters like Athena, who were from tribes were awed. Even Atia had never heard someone speak over a PA before, and concluded that the Goddess' voice was so much louder than Caesars she must be divine. Her voice was so loud it took a moment for her words to actually sink in. Hecate waited.

"Centurion Scipio Venator, a man unlike his hundreds of companions, was able to decipher patterns. He was able to look past what was immediately in front of him, to correlate data and create a picture," even as she spoke, the Goddess knew her high priestess was burning all of the meticulously collected data and collaborated facts that Scipio had compiled over the years to ashes, "A picture which revealed the greatest conspiracy against Caesar and his Legion that the southwest wasteland will ever see. He uncovered a threat so grave, it takes precedence over all other enemies of the Legion. And so he acted."

The Daughters were confused. Very few of them had ever heard the Goddess speak, much less praise a Centurion or any Legionary. _Did this man not just attack us?_ they wondered. _Did the actions of this man not lead to the deaths of some of our own?_ To praise him, as the Goddess seemed to be doing, was in poor taste at the very least.

"He defied the will of Caesar himself, because he knew no one would see the threat like he did. None of his peers would see the patterns and put together the threat posed against the Legion, so massive in scope as to be unbelievable. And they didn't believe it. This man, the Centurion Scipio Venator is the greatest hero of the Legion, as not only did he take action against their greatest enemy, he did so risking the ridicule and contempt that his peers would no doubt award him. He hoped, against hope, that his sacrifice would lead the Legion here, that his desperate actions would save the Legion he loved so dear."

"But he has failed. The Legion is no more aware of the threat posed to them now than they were before. Centurion Scipio Venator is dead and so are his Legionaries. He has failed, but no more than the Legion has failed him. For the Centurion's sacrifice, for his hard work, for his obsessive dedication to Caesar and the Legion, they have branded him a traitor. A pariah. Even now, only a few scant weeks after his disappearance, they are already spitting and cursing his name," she spoke with vitriol but was smiling a wolfish grin, "This, my Daughters, is how the Legion treats it's heroes. And if the Legion treats it's heroes this way, with rejection and scorn; then we, the Legion's greatest enemy, are assured victory!"


	46. The Children of the Tribes

The Children of the Tribes

"I want to head my own initiative," Julia told the Goddess. It hadn't been quite a month since the attack on Ouroboros. Scipio Venator's assault had been mostly resolved. The Legionaries following Venator were sent far away from the valley by a fake trail, and the dead were buried. Even the Legion dead were buried, although without the rites given to Hounds and Daughters. The Legion was once again blind to the machinations of the Goddess and life had returned to normal.

"Your own initiative?" the Goddess asked. They sat on plush cushions in the Goddess' private quarters, wreathed in fragrant smoke and smoking bufo from a hookah. They shared a single mouthpiece, a privilege given to no other Daughter and a quiet symbol of their oft-unspoken bond, "What sort of initiative?"

"Information gathering. Compiling the history of the Legion," when Julia returned from Vault 29 and the ruins of the Twin Mothers village she still felt imbued with an incredible sense of purpose. She felt compelled to take on more responsibility. She was no longer content to merely act on the will of the Goddess.

The idea came to her in a flash. She explained it in full to Atia.

"All of these men, these Legionaries, they all come from tribes, right? Local tribes?" she gesticulated wildly with her empty coffee mug. They were in the archives, near the back where the oldest records were stored. Atia sat on a dusty armchair, hands wrapped around her knees and shoes off. Julia was pacing the area.

"Yes," Atia answered.

"And all of these women, all of the Daughters, they come from tribes, too," Julia continued, "Well, most of them. Avata's from the Wild-Thorne family farm, and Bella's from some hick town, but those are basically tribes, and their brothers joined the Legion," she rambled, wide-eyed. Atia nodded her head, not really listening. She was thinking about whether or not she'd get a drink before collecting her young son, Julius, from class, "But the Daughters come from the same tribes. It's all from the same tribes, basically. We keep records on everybody, and the Legion keeps records, right?"

"Yes. Well, there was," Atia was pulled from her daydreaming. She admitted she couldn't vouch for the current Legion, but when she was slave and before she was awarded to Aurelius of Phoenix she was intimately familiar with Caesar's record-keeping.

"If the Legion keeps records of tribes they've conquered and slaves they've taken..."

"They do," Atia confirmed.

"We can find out what happened to... to everyone's family. We can find out what tribes everyone is from, and if the Legion keeps records of troop movements..."

"They do," Atia confirmed again.

"Then we can find out where they are now!" Julia was so excited her hands shook, "We can tell everyone where their brothers are, where their sisters are, where their friends are in the Legion. What happened to them, if they're dead," Julia swallowed a lump in her throat, "Where does the Legion keep their records?"

Atia frowned, "Well, the most recent records usually travel with Caesar himself. I think," she picked at her eyelash and chewed her lip, "Sorry, it's been awhile."

"It's alright. Any information you can give me is useful," Julia smiled sympathetically.

"Okay, well, most of the records probably travel with Caesar. Some Centurions might keep their own, but Caesar keeps most of them. If they aren't with him, they're in Flagstaff. In the War Room Headquarters in the center of the city."

"It's not like they're the best records or anything," Atia continued. She had been most impressed with the Legion's written history when she could only compare them to her tribe's oral traditions, but the fastidious and detailed record-keeping of the Daughters put the Legion to shame, "But it ought to be enough to reunite at least some people."

Julia was certain The Goddess wouldn't allow her Daughters to reunite with their missing family, nor did Julia want that, but she could at least let them know how their family was doing.

"I want to collect data on the family your Daughters have in the Legion. I think it will help morale, to see where their relatives are and what happened to them after they were separated. It will help us paint a clearer picture of the Legion, not only their movements and tactics but their very soul. Corroborating information from our Daughters and their records so we can know them entirely," Julia had rehearsed her pitch again and again but there was little she could do to dress it up. Either the Goddess would approve or she wouldn't, it didn't matter how Julia presented her idea.

After Julia finished the Goddess was quiet. She looked for signs in the smoke that danced lazily around them. More than anything she wanted information, for information was more powerful than any force in the wasteland, but she was hesitant to know too much about her most hated enemy. What affect would it have if her Daughters started seeing the Legion not as a faceless antagonist, but as real people, men with names and faces that were once dear to them? The Goddess disagreed that it would help morale, but then a vision came to her. Out of the smoke came a face, with a wide brow and large round eyes. It was the face of a young man, and she was so overwhelmed by him she was driven to tears. She felt the longing in her heart to know this young man, and she realized that her Daughters already knew their families were part of the Legion. Letting them know the exact details of their brothers, sons, sisters, and daughters still enslaved would help quiet their troubled hearts, even if it invited new problems.

"My most trusted daughter Julia, you may do your work with my blessing. Find our brothers in the Legion, let us know of them. Let us weep for our fallen, and worry for our brothers who still fight Caesar's war. Let us dream of rescuing our sisters still in bondage, and weep for their plight. Let us hope our Daughters are inspired to hate the Legion even more, knowing greater the injustices Caesar foists upon their blood," she lovingly stroked Julia's face, and kissed her on the forehead to seal her approval. Julia now had the authority to lead Operation Remus. Little did she know her vanity project would soon change the face of the southwest wasteland forever.


End file.

Fallout, Drama