Imperial Orders

♕The Failure♕

The soft clack of the Djareny leader's shoes echoed through the spacious Khaasian room. Her long, patchwork skirt trailed behind her on the hardwood floor as she approached a tinted bay window, lowering herself into the wide window seat with a sigh. Nexetra Serpis allotted larger and larger spaces for herself each time her horde of Djareny shifted locations, but not even the most luxurious of accommodations could rid her of the nagging feeling of confinement that plagued the pit of her stomach. There was something within her- the primal instinct of a pack animal- that longed to fight alongside the Djaren Nation. She wanted to raise a blackened Djareny club, wrought of the heaviest iron, over her shoulders and bring it down on the head of the childless human emperor, solidifying her race's place as the dominant occupant of the Milky Way. 

Yet, she knew that this was nothing more than a foolish fantasy. 

She would watch, like the pathetic damsel in distress her condition forced her to be, as some brainless Djaren hero took Celatys in an effort to win her heart, and then came back to find that he would never get through the glass walls that kept her away from the world. 

It was an old game to the young woman, cursed with a fair face and an insatiable appetite for living flesh. 

She had been playing it all her life. 

"Nexetra?" 

At first, the sound of her name did not register in her mind. She was lost far too deep in thought, running her artfully arched palms over the bumpy fabric of her skirt. Despite its odd composition of seemingly random colors and the messy lines of thread that criss-crossed it, it was her favorite piece of clothing to wear. It didn't quite conform to the shape of her body as perfectly as more conventional garments did, but its significance ran far deeper than its appearance. 

Every time her soldiers successfully plundered a Celatysian town or slaughtered an Imperial official, the most precious of her spoils was not the gold to be added to her already vast treasury or the expensive human jewelry; it was a piece of cloth. A single square of fabric, rarely more than four inches wide, was to be brought to her from the site of the conquest and slipped carefully through the narrow food slot embedded in her door. It could be from the apron of a maid or from the silk sleeve of a half-finished gown intended for a local magistrate's wife: Nexetra would never know- she didn't care to know. Part of the curious tradition's appeal was its intrinsic mystery. 

The night after receiving her prized piece of cloth, the Djareny leader would get to work with a sewing machine, adding the talisman to the end of her skirt. This was a skill that took her Djareny hands, naturally deficient in fine motor skills, years to perfect, as could be seen in the rough, jagged stitches that held the earlier portions of the skirt together. 

The skirt was more than a piece of clothing: it was a tangible testament to the greatness of the Djareny race. The thousands of patches of cloth that composed it were solid proof that the Djareny had not been defeated in the war so many years ago- they were strong, and still fighting. 

"Nexetra, dear, you must get out of your dreadful habit of spending more time within the confines of your brilliant mind than you spend in physical interaction with other people. It is important for you to maintain your psychological health: living alone in a glass box is usually a straight path to insanity." The voice came again, this time closer to the transparent barrier that marked the edge of Nexetra Serpis' territory. 

This dialogue was too long and personal for the Djareny leader to miss. She rose from her seat with visible reluctance, walking past a circular rug surrounded by a ring of small leather sofas. So much seating certainly wasn't necessary for a dwelling that would only ever house one person, but it made Nexetra feel a little less like she was living all alone. 

"Father." This word left her mouth simply, with no marked inflection. She stood at the very edge of the hastily erected glass wall that spanned the length of her suite, looking through it at the elderly man who stared back at her with dark conviction to match her own. She had known it was him who had come to visit long before her eyes had fallen upon his face: Vendyr Serpis was one of the few Djareny with an iota of civilization in his blood and manner. He employed the aid of a cane and a thick coat in his old age and spoke with the crisply enunciated accent of a Celatysian scholar, behavior usually restricted to the human race. Most of the Djareny attributed their leader's refined clothing and unusually varied vocabulary to the example he set more even than to her human mother. 

"Have you brought me my cloth?" Nexetra asked, the corners of her crimson lips turning upward into a sly smirk. "It is fitting that you chose to bring it yourself instead of sending a servant: it is, after all, a representation of my crowning achievement. I patiently await news of the boy's fall. How did he die? What has become of the Tactile girl accompanying him, and of the human children he so intelligently surrounded himself with as living distractions?"

Vendyr's expression dropped almost instantly at this statement. He pulled his hands behind his back, wringing them tightly as he stepped closer to his daughter, his foot grazing the clear partition between them. "Nexetra..." he trailed off, both sad and scared. It was obvious that he had come to fear the fiery young woman in front of him, both for her cutthroat style of leadership and the shapeless monster that called her body home. 

"What?" the Djareny leader tapped her foot impatiently, looking forward. 

"I have failed as a father, and as a Djaren. You will not get what you seek tonight, and the fault is all mine." 

"Your failure cannot be so great that it overshadows all the work we have done to recover from the dark times forced upon us by our loss in the war," Nexetra smiled thinly. "Slide the cloth through my food slot, and then you may tell me the tale. I must begin sewing now if I am to be finished by dawn."

"There is no cloth," Vendyr managed to croak out, his voice box psychologically compressed by the intensity of his daughter's gaze. "The boy lives." 

"But that is not what plagues my mind," he quickly added at the sight of Nexetra's flaming eyes. She seemed to rise to twice her height, towering over him in unbridled rage. 

"It is not he who stands in your way. Luck seems to be working in his favor, for his foolish attempts to cover his tracks have led him to a metaphorical gold mine." 

Seconds before she tore through the glass with her Tactile might, Nexetra regained a marginal sense of calm, interested in this new development. "And what, Father, would this gold mine be?" 

Vendyr leaned in, so close that his breath fogged up the glass before him. "The girl is no ordinary Tactile. Forget the boy, Nexetra. It is she who must be destroyed."