I was looking at the Queen in the state of shock. It shouldn't - couldn't - end like this. I loved
Merta and she loved me: wasn't love supposed to overcome everything?
"This time, it didn't work out," said the Queen.
She's reading my mind, I realized. Fortunately, she was decent enough
to not comment on that.
"So?" I said. "Are you going to start anew? The wars, the killing?"
She looked puzzled. "Why would I, Zack?"
"Don't call me that!"
"You're in no position to tell me how I should call you! And no, I'm
not going to start any wars. I waged wars against other Geomancers. But
I have just killed the last one left. There is noone to oppose me. The
power
is all mine."
She smirked. "I have another purpose. My goal - the true goal -
is not here. Not in this world."
"Well, I hope you're happy!" screamed Raia. "All the plans, all the
effort and for what? Nothing! Because a stupid figment of my imagination just had
to go and play heroine!"
"He said he loved me!" protested Merta. "She would kill him!"
"Oh, you stupid..." started Raia, but she couldn't finish the sentence.
"What will happen now?" asked Merta.
"If I'm lucky, the Queen will find us soon and she will erase us,"
said Raia. "If I'm not... well, then I'll have to spend an
eternity in here. With you."
"So, let me make this clear," said Max slowly. "Mrs. Tain has tried to
get rid of the Queen by herself and now she's dead?"
Grace nodded. "I can use geomancy now," she said simply. "Mrs. Tain
is... was my ancestor. I inherited the power."
"But we don't even know where she went," said Max. "She was the leader.
I can't find the castle by myself."
"She didn't want us to follow her."
"Instead, she screwed up and left us in here," said Max. "Damn that
crone! Where's Zack? Did he go with her?"
"Probably," nodded Grace. "What should we do?"
"You don't have to do anything."
They turned around. Linda, still sleeping, yawned.
Shawn was standing nearby. His face bore the expression of utmost grief.
"You want to leave this world?" I couldn't imagine it. She was crazy!
"I have my purpose," said the Queen. "Seeking and destroying the
Ascended Ones. I was stranded here for far too long."
"What do you mean?"
"I was never finished. People who built me were all killed. I was left
to my own devices. It took me a very long time to get this far."
The centre of the chamber exploded. The seal vanished.
Blue glow appeared around the Queen.
"Full power," she said. "I am fully functional again."
"What are you doing here?"
said Max. "We thought we've got rid of you for good."
"You have. I didn't come to fight. I just... want to talk."
"About what?"
"Tomorrow morning, you will die," said Shawn. "Everyone will. And it's
my fault. That's why I came. To... apologize."
Grace blinked. "It's a joke, right?"
"Unfortunately, not," said Shawn. "Veronica Tain has failed her
mission. I only gave her one chance.The Queen has possessed Raia's body
and she's now making her final preparations. I must stop her now. At
any cost."
"Who are you?" asked Max, quietly. "Or, better yet, what are you?"
Shawn shrugged. "This body is nothing. Just a hunk of meat. But I, as
the person who speaks... I call myself Collector. But you might think
of me as... Leik Tain. I am one of the Ascended Ones."
"You... Shawn was talking about them."
"He didn't know much. I have created him. He failed in his purpose
miserably."
"So now you are going to kill everybody?" Max was strangely calm.
"I'm really sorry. It's the only way."
"Why are you so afraid of the Queen?"
Leik sighed.
"It's a long story."
"If you want to destroy us, don't we have the right to know?"
Leik nodded. "Yes, I suppose you are right..."
"If you tell us everything," said Grace, "we might find another way."
"You won't," said Leik. "But I will tell you my story. I wish... to be
understood."
"If this is the last story we will ever hear," said Linda, "it'd better
be good!"
"The first thing you need to know," started Leik Tain, "is that this
world used to be different. Long time ago, you know. You live in small
villages and
towns... I suppose it might be hard to imagine that there used to be
cities with more people than the current population of the whole
planet."
"What's a planet?" asked Linda.
"It's another word for 'world'. The proper question at this point would
be, I believe, 'what happened to all those people'?"
"I don't care much about that," shrugged Linda.
"But we do," said Max, throwing a nasty glare towards her. "Please,
continue."
"The people of that age were... more advanced than you are now," said
Leik. "The wonders they've built... they would surpass your wildest
imagination, I suppose. But they were never content. They desired
power. Greater power. And still greater. So..."
A image formed in the air, hazy and transparent. A ball of solid black.
The surface wasn't smooth, but beset with indentation and ridges.
Strange, metallic limbs were sticking from it and moving.
"This was their ultimate creation," said Leik. "A machine powerful
enough to sustain itself for eternity. A machine capable of sentience,
capable to
travel to distant stars... The ultimate being."
He fell silent, then continued. "They started to call themselves 'the
Ascended Ones'."
Imagine a human being. It's said that every one of them is defined by
his (or her) friends.
But the Ascended Ones have no friends. They don't need
friendship. They don't prefer either company or loneliness. They can
stay alone for millions
of years without any problems. Or they can live in huge conglomerate.
They are not forced to do anything, and that's why they are free to do
however they please. They create, they destroy, they dream.
No human being would be able to live like that. Humans can't exist
without other humans. They're wired that way. They're a social race.
But the Ascended Ones aren't humans, although some of them used to be
humans, before they gave up their mortal bodies for electronic
perfection. And the wiring... can be adjusted. Just like that.
"This is important," said Leik. "Please, I'm... taking pains to make
you understand us. At first, people were not told about us. We were
flukes. Secret things. But..."
They wanted to wall them off and study them. Noone could really
understand the ultimate result of the experiments. Because human
brain - however wonderful it might be - is inherently limited. A human
being
with a brain twice the normal size would be never able to exist.
The Ascended Ones had no such limitation. Their structures could grow
and merge. Their intelectual capacity, although small during those
first days, could grow and surpass the one of a human being.
In the end, they escaped.
"At that time," said Leik, "humans were still sending things in the
sky. Their whole civilization became dependent on technology above
their heads. That was our chance. We had no fixed physical form; our
'seeds', child forms, if you want, were nothing but streams of
information. Soon after our escape, we infiltrated a probe that was
soon to be launched towards distant reaches of the Solar system."
"It shouldn't end like that," said Merta, sadly. "I tried, Raia, I
really did!"
"It's not all your fault," murmured Raia. "I created you, I am
partially to blame."
"Look, there must still be something we could do..."
Raia laughed, but there was no mirth. "Sure. We're cut off, you know.
The Queen controls our body - my
body. And she has full access to geomancy. You still don't get it? We
lost. We were utterly defeated!"
Merta hesitated. "But..."
Raia slapped her.
Merta, hesitating, raised her hand to her face.
"Can't you see?" hissed Raia. "Can't you see that you're making this
harder for me? All I've lived for is lost. And your stupid hope is just
making it worse!"
Probes have failed before. This one was more expensive than most, so
the loss of contact soon after launch was troublesome, but it wasn't
really weird. Maybe the
history would be different, if the few humans who knew, stepped out and ordered the
destruction of the probe. At least, that's what humans were saying,
long after the fact.
When the engines of the probe switched on at the wrong moment, sending
it flying towards the asteroid belt instead of Venus, engineers
officially declared the probe lost.
"For the ones who reached the belt," said Leik, "the floating rocks
proved to be paradise. With the help of microscopic machines, they
mined the asteroids; they cut them up and built their new bodies. Soon,
there were thousands. Then, millions. And then..."
The growing radio noise drew attention of human astronomers. Attempts
to keep it secret failed. Humanity was swept by emotions - both joy and
fear. Did someone else, from distant stars, finally show?
When they got back the reply to their first message, it caused a
world-wide shock.
"When they realised that we were not aliens, but machines - machines they created, they started to hate
us," said Leik, sadly. "They wanted to destroy us - but their weapons
couldn't reach us, not where we were. Their emotions drove them to do
and
imagine stupid things. They claimed that we were going to build a shell
around the sun and leave them to freeze. That we were going to
irradiate this world by invisible rays and kill all forms of life. They
thought we would destroy them."
"Isn't that what you're doing right now?" asked Max. "You're the one to
talk!"
"I suppose you're right. But my story is still far from
finished."
"Oh," said Linda. She sounded pretty dissapointed.
"You can't imagine it," said Shawn, softly. "The fear we caused. There
was single, all-compassing fear: that they are obsolete now. That they
don't play any important part in the universe. That the only reason
their race had existed was to create the next step - us."
"Was it?" asked Max.
Shawn hesitated visibly. "I... I'm not sure. I don't believe that
universe or anything in it has a purpose. But they believed it. They
believed that they are the pinnacle, that somebody - or something -
created the universe for them alone. Being proved wrong must have been
terrible."
He was silent for a few moments.
"Don't you understand?" He almost pleaded. "We have tried! I was there at that time, I
know we tried to talk to them. We would gladly let them live on planets
- we knew of lots they could use! We were fine with just the space. But
they wouldn't accept. Though they relied on machines every day of their
lives, they were too proud - or too suspicious - to accept our gifts."
"They must had been really afraid," said Grace, softly.
"We offered them existence in our form, after their natural lifes end,"
said Shawn bitterly, "Many of them accepted. Much more, though, did
not. And in the end, they created the Queen. That was the beginning of
end."
The humming increased. Some sort of barrier appeared around the Queen
and I couldn't come near her.
However evil she was, the look on her face was still a look I've seen
on Merta often. That made it worse.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked.
She turned to me.
"Because you are nothing," she said. "You are a fluke. Long time ago,
your race believed that someone put them here. They believed their
existence has a purpose. They were wrong. I know that, because I do have a purpose. I was created
with that purpose in mind and I can't go astray. That's something you
can't understand."
"What?"
"Just consider," she said. "Yes, I have waged the war on this world.
But who made this world into what it is now? It was them. Their fear and evil has
destroyed everything great. The Ascended Ones robbed your people of
their only chance to achieve greatness."
She smiled. "That's not the reason I'm fighting them. As I said, I was
simply created that way. I just want you to understand that I didn't
surpass what they did. And I probably never will."
"She's not here yet," said Raia. "She doesn't care about us."
Merta nodded. "Is that good?"
"It means we'll live for a while," said Raia.
"I'm really sorry."
"Well, yeah."
"I mean it!" insisted Merta.
"Well, what about it?"
"Please, don't be angry with me..."
"After you destroyed my life, you tell me not to be angry with you?
Well, when should I be, then?"
Merta hesitated. Then she blushed. "How about... if you gave me... a
spanking?"
Raia laughed. "Is that how you solved these things with Zack? It
doesn't work that way, you stupid girl! Spanking won't grant you
forgiveness unless the one who spanks you wants to forgive you!"
She turned away. "And I don't want to forgive you, Merta. You better
learn to live with that."
"The Queen was something terrible," said Shawn. "We could never examine
her, but we know it had terrific power. It could destroy us. Erase our
consciousness, eat us up from the inside. We never... we never
encountered death before. As immortals, we are afraid to die. Much more
than you."
"Why is that?" asked Linda.
"Because you can die today or in sixty years, but in one hundred years
you will all be dead. From
our viewpoint there's no real difference. For us... can you imagine
dying when you don't have to
die? Ever?"
"What did you do?" asked Max.
"We attacked."
There is a downside to having too much power. And that is that noone
can control or contain anyone else anymore. Most of the Ascended Ones
weren't violent.
But all it took was one.
A barrage of meteoric impacts didn't destroy just the lab where Queen
was being produced. All major population centres were extinguished.
"Your world was crippled," said Shawn. "We didn't condone what was
done, but we didn't help you afterwards either. We didn't care about
you anymore."
"But now you care," relied Max. "Is it because of the Queen?"
Shawn nodded. "Somehow, she survived. She can live in human bodies.
When some of us came back to look at your world, we were shocked. She
found her way in everyone. The ones with most traces were Geomancers.
We determined that even though their powers are incredible, they are
still a mere fraction of the Queen's total power. But the Queen was
drawn thin. Separated. Her mind was gone. Or so we thought."
"Three hundred years ago, Geomancers realized that their powers are
growing weak. The number of humans was growing and Queen's presence was
thinning even further. And Geomancers' response was to - create Raia."
"And Raia had over 20% of the whole Queen. The Queen's mind was back."
"Why don't you want to spank me?" asked Merta.
Raia turned around. "Why would I?"
Merta hesitated. "Well... you said you created me?"
Raia nodded. "The most stupid idea I had in all my life, let me tell
you!"
"But that means..." said Merta. "Well... that makes you my Mom, right?"
Raia was aghast.
"W...what!? Where did you get that
idea? Wait, what are you doing?"
Merta was shrinking rapidly. When Raia took another look, she was a
little girl. Six years, at most.
"Stop that!" she shouted. "You were never at that age! You always
looked the same!"
The girl looked at her. "Mommy?" she asked hopefully.
"That's it!" shrieked Raia. "I'm coming for you, and believe me, you
are going to wish I wouldn't!"
"The rest of story is short," said Shawn. "When Raia was sealed, I knew
it's not the end. I approached Leik Tain and told him everything. I
made him an offer and he accepted. I had... absorbed him."
"Absorbed him?" asked Grace.
"It's very hard to understand. He became... a part of me."
"Never mind that," interrupted Max. "What happened next?"
"I was watching the world. Raia was sealed, but Queen's power still
worked through a Geomancer named Marie. The Queen started to
concentrate her powers."
"How?"
"By reducing the number of humans. Less humans meant she wasn't as
thin. If everyone had one child, and then died... the child would get
Queen from both of the parents. That's why your population was
diminishing. Once it diminished enough... she could break the seal."
"And use Raia's Queen-infused blood to create Nyx. And Specter. And..."
"Yes, Max, and your sister, too. They were closest thing to Geomancers
she managed to create in three hundred years."
"That means," said Max, "that I have large portion of her in my blood,
too?"
"Yes. But you don't have to worry about that anymore."
Shawn stood up straight.
"Shawn, my construct, has failed to kill Raia. Raia has failed to
defeat the Queen. Veronica has failed. Even Zack has failed. The Queen
has only a margin of power now, but she's still strong enough to cause
havoc if she manages to get off this world. This leaves me without
options."
"I am Collector. I am the appointed guardian of this world, with sole
task to prevent Queen from leaving. And that is what I will do."
And then, quietly: "I'm sorry."
With that, he disappeared.
Everything was quiet for a while. Then, Linda yawned.
"Sorry, I couldn't keep my eyes open during all that ranting," she
said. "Have I missed something?"
"No, Mommy, I'm sorry!" wailed the
little girl. "You should think of that before! Now
you're going to have your little bare bottom spanked good, and believe
me, you will feel sorry after
I'm done with you!" "Mommy, no! Don't do that! STOP THAT!"
And she did, thought Raia. Why is this memory coming back now? What did
I do at that time? I don't even remember. Something stupid, probably. I
remember Mom was very angry. Taking me over her knee... and then...
And then she just froze and I jumped down. When she came to, she didn't
remember anything. Something as stupid as an impending spanking caused
the Queen to react.
"I should take my spanking at that time," she said, to noone in
particular. "Maybe my life would be different if I did."
"Mommy?"
Raia looked at the little girl looking at her with tears in her eyes.
"Are you really Merta?" she asked, softly. "Or are you me? Is there
even any difference?"
"Mommy?"
Raia patted her head. "Yes?"
"I don't wanna spanking," said the girl.
"And
I don't want to spank you," sighed Raia. "But I'm going to."
"No, Mommy, I'm sorry!" wailed the little girl.
"I'm sorry, too," said Raia. "But I am without options."
A chair has appeared in the mindscape. Raia sat down and sat the girl
on her lap.
"I love you," she said, and to her surprise, she realized it's the
truth. "And I don't want anything bad to happen to you."
"I know..."
"As long as you understand. Now let's turn you over my knee."
"Nooo..."
But it was to no avail.
She had Merta's brown dress, shrunk to her size,
but her panties were
white, with pattern of little bear heads. Where did that come from? thought Raia. She
never seen any panties that weren't mono-colored.
She pulled them down anyways. The little body stiffened as she
did that.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Please, Mommie! Don't spank meeee!"
*SMACK!*
The girl hiccuped, shocked by the impact. Raia almost jumped - that hurt!
"Why does it hurt me?" she
yelped.
*SPANK!*
"Ouch!"
When a parent spanks a child, there's often said "This will hurt me
more than it will hurt you," but in Raia's case, it was literally true.
As she gritted her teeth and continued to smack the bottom of the
naughty little girl, she was feeling each spank at least twice as
strong.
Very soon, the girl was crying heavily and Raia herself couldn't
prevent herself from occassional sobs. Yet, she continued to spank.
It was her duty, after all.
"Still not enough power," mused the Queen. "But there will be. I'll
make it in time."
"In time?"
"The Ascended Ones will destroy this world," she said,
matter-of-factly. "Once again. This time, they'll make sure it's done
right. But they won't stop me. And I'll destroy them!"
"Why?" I cried. "This is not our fight! Why should we suffer because of
you and them!"
"You didn't learn anything, did you?" she snorted. "There is no purpose
for you! Only I have a purpose, and I won't let them destroy it!"
Raia was in tears. Did real parents feel like this, too? When they had
to cause pain to those they loved the most?
Did Zack feel like this?
How did that thought get in
there?
Only after the little girl's bottom was thoroughly reddened (her own
must have been too), she allowed herself to rest.
She helped the girl down. She was rubbing her bottom for a while,
then...
In a flash, she grew up. She was about ten years old now.
She looked scared again. "Mom! I know I screwed up, but please - don't
do it! I don't want a spanking!"
With a chill, Raia realized that her own sore bottom is fine again.
She sighed. "I'm sorry, but it seems there's no choice."
The girl sighed and handed Raia a hairbrush. "Please, Mommy... not too
hard...?"
"I'll see what I can do."
Clothes were the same, but as Raia tugged the panties down, she noticed
they changed again - now they were with pink polka dots. The bottom
underneath was white - no trace of previous spanking remained.
The girl started to cry almost immediately after first hairbrush swats
have landed - and no wonder, thought Raia. It positively burned!
Tears appeared in her own eyes soon afterwards.
She helped the girl down after her bottom was chastised enough, they
both hugged and they both cried a lot.
But it wasn't the end yet, realized Raia as the burning feeling was
abruptly cut off.
This time, the girl was around twelve to thirteen. She has started to
develop. But the scared look in her eyes was still the same.
She had a wooden spoon in her hand. Raia winced.
"Come on," she said. "Don't say anything, don't make it worse for both
of us, just get over my knee, would you?"
For those of you who make notes: very pretty white/red striped panties.
*CRACK!*
The wooden spoon was even worse than the hairbrush and Raia had cried
almost from the start.
She started crying even before the girl over her lap did.
"I just hope..." she sobbed, "that you're... the last!"
She was wrong.
Merta was standing before her, handing her a paddle.
"Will you give me the spanking I deserve?" she asked.
Raia breathed heavily. "Well..."
"Please?"
"OK, then! But if it will hurt me more again, then I'm going to kill
somebody!"
"What's the plan, then?" asked Linda.
"I'm not sure," shrugged Max. "We are lost in here."
"There was a reason for all of this," said Grace suddenly.
"What?"
"He hasn't come to tell us that we're doomed," she said. "There's still
one chance. He said that he's without options, he told us who failed,
but..."
"But there's still us," said Linda. "We can attack the Queen!"
"How?" asked Max. "We don't even know..."
"I do!" cried Grace. "I can't
explain it - but I feel it! She's tugging at me!"
"So you can..."
"I remember the teleport shape! I can send us directly to her!"
And somewhere, far away, someone thought: Which is exactly what I want you to do. End
of Chapter 24 Grace's Readers'
Corner:
Well,
we're off to see the Queen. And I sure hope we will defeat her, because
otherwise we're... screwed.
One little remark: if you'll send a lot of feedback, next chapter might
be done sooner! The name of that chapter is "The Last Day", so don't
let it slip!
"And
I don't want to spank you," sighed Raia. "But I'm going to."