Subject:
Gender: Genderfluid
Date: March 5th, 2015
Foreword: The following memory log was extracted from Dr. Rosale following an experiment with SCP-XXXX which lasted fifteen minutes.
Draconic fog seeps up the docksides, curling around the emptied berths of your harbor. The great maws of the Matriarchal dress swallow your hands within their lavender and crimson-stitched folds. The day of presentation has come. Though you stand in the crimson warpaint of your house, your sisters, both the aligned Matriarchal houses at your flanks, and those priestesses and lesser Matriarchs at your back, knew your nerves.
Heavy is the head that wears the Crown of Winds. A crown of gold with platinum scales and antlers jutting towards the clouds. Perhaps this is your only indulgence in the shape of the divine. Surely no other form than the great serpents could befit such a term. Hanging from a belt about your waist sat the sacred tool, carefully nested in a ram’s leather sheathe.
First came the great bellow horns of the golden rams, the House of Colchis’s fleet slipped out of the fog banks, sharks skipping atop the waves. Endless petals on a breeze. Their great long-vessels of war are sleek and crafted well, like your own. Each blazed the purple banners of your house in the seaside wind. For a moment, you grow concerned that the berths of your grand port may not be enough. Then again, you had hidden the strength of your fleet in secret coves ilms away.
Better to let all believe your strength limited. History sings of those who were threatened by the power of others.
Your sister, by blood, arrived with none of the fanfare you had expected for her stature. She departed from the lead vessel upon your dock. No crown, no honor guard, not even her bondmate to speak of. Naught but a pair of priestesses. She greeted you with warmth in her eyes but none of touch. There would be time for such affection later. Her lilac warpaint declared her heir to the Colchian Throne, a position once envied in the heat of youth. Yet, was there recognition there, of what you have become? A gesture of deference… strange for a fox such as her.
With her rode the newer houses from the south, across the sea. Those whose uneasy clashes with the machines never abated. They too came with only priestesses in simple regalia and without their crowns. They bowed, out of respect. Perhaps out of admiration by the starry look in some eyes. You returned the gesture, watching their eyes widen and ears tilt back. Hospitable gaze drank in the various shapes into which they were molded. Sleek, powerful, efficient. Serpentine, multi-limbed, tauric, winged, horned, antlered. Shapes meant for divine war. There was appeal to each in your chest, yet the time needed would be prohibitive for frequent shifts.
Third came the Queens of the inner sea, beyond the Colchian mountains. They brought with them the Matriarchs of the great mountains, those sisters who still spoke of the southern cousins in all their eccentricities. Their ships one might call fat, squat, and top-heavy. Built for a calmer sea. Their eyes and hands were soft as they left their ships and stepped onto your dock. Richer crimson and house colors in their regalia. They came with crowns and honor guards, yet also offerings of slaves and riches. Eyes with none of the hardness that you knew so well.
Shapes a plenty represented amongst them. Tall, powerful, obese, far too many eyes, wings with mouths, limbs with strangely gangly and wheel like limbs. The more esoteric were appealing, while the twisted and unnatural proportions provoked slight smiles of disapproval. With them came honor guards and priestesses in larger numbers than your allies.
Shortly following them arrived the Queens of the Far East in narrow sleek vessels. They too were hard to the ways of war. Decorated in soft and fine fabrics which swished with every motion. Their shapes were sleek, evoking the androgyny and wyrms of the east.
“Hail Queen of Winds.”
“Hail Queens of Barter and the East.” Polite, political.
Their gazes hold none of the warmth of your allies. They watch, judge, measuring you and those aligned with you for strength. Where their allegiance lay, you cannot divine.
You meet them with hospitality, nonetheless.
“We await the interior now. Did they accompany you?”
The expression that crosses the Eldest Barter Matriarch’s face is something which catches you by surprise. Annoyed? Irritated perhaps?
“They will be some time. They have strange ideas about shipbuilding.”
So, you retreat to the Golden Orchards, children of the great trees planted in the seat of Aeae. Fine drinks and fruits for the temporary guests haunting your halls.
The Sun is above the fog by the time the high whistle horns blow, signaling the arrival of the interior Queens. It is with some haste that acheing legs carry everyone back to the stone pier to await their arrival. Nearly at a snail’s pace, their ships emerge from the fog. Ships of extravagance, laced with gold and soaked crimson cloth. It only takes a single glance to know they were hastily built, barely seaworthy, and near completely dependent on the slaves in their holds.
Several slide into berth and promptly begin to settle in the mud. Their owners unload hastily and leave the wood to rot.
The Queens of the Interior slither from their ships like worms in the grass. They are most numerous of all, nearly fifty, all from the rich and fertile lands of the north and center. Schemers, vipers. Their eyes meticulously suck in every detail of the harbor. Searching for weaknesses, for opportunities. At a sluggish pace they crawl down the dock. Snippets of conversation wafting in snippets to your ears.
“Look at her, standing there. She doesn’t even try to set herself apart in shape.” An ache in your chest.
“Her fortress is barren, devoid of wealth and spoils of war.”
“Barely any ships in sight, only unsightly river barges.”
“They want this half-breed charlatan to lead us to conquest? Her war painted is dull and faded. She is weak.”
“The stone is strong and the craftsmanship excellent. Perhaps we take it from her?” So brazen as to scheme in reach of your ears.
“Patience, sister.” A priestess whispered in your pointed ear.
“Queens of the Interior, welcome,” your voice resonated with warmth and hospitality you did not feel. “I hope your long journeys were fruitful and strengthening?”
“Sister, I find myself disappointed in you. We were expecting a grand welcome, a feast, a mass sacrifice upon our arrival. An appeal to unity and strength before the eyes of the barbarians to the south and west. Yet we arrive to find your home lacking the richness, the smell of feasts, and the fleets which will carry our armies along the intended routes of the grand conquest.”
Heat seethed beneath your cheeks. Presenting as little threat to the Queens of the Interior was always going to be the play to counter threatened movements in the dark, but the entitlement—
“Careful, Sister,” Your blood whispered in your ear. “Do not be goaded into their trap.”
The lack of trust from one’s own blood was almost insulting. At least until you realized your fist was clenched so tightly you were drawing blood.
“Queen of Meadows, Queens of the Interior, would I were to welcome you into the grand halls of my fortress, it would be a spectacle for all to see. But your journey has not ended, the temple where we shall gather and prepare is not here. It is inland. We simply cannot take your creative endeavors upstream.”
Several of the Queen’s sneer at the insult laid at their feet. Barb for a barb.
"How will we be traveling to the temple site, half-sister? One of your barbaric river barges?"
You pursed your lips as the laughter spread among the interior Queens. They dare flaunt the hospitality of your house? The allied Matriarchs at your flanks shifted nervously in their regalia, house colors whispering the ties to your own. Sisters of battle but lesser than the great interior houses before you. The priests and guards palmed their weapons and instruments of magic. Even the Queens of Barter, of the East, and of the Mountains shifted uneasily.
It seemed all but the interior knew of your temperament. They knew of the boons of your house. Perhaps it would have been a simple act to call forth the fleet in waiting, cleave the head from the arrogant snakes once and for all. But such displays of power would only set the rest against you.
A simple extension of the hand towards one of the priestesses brought the laughs to a curious close. The coldness in your expression spoke volumes of the insult laid at your feet. The priestess shuffled forwards, an anxious look plastered across her Font's paint. A bone instrument, painted in crimson runes, was hastily pressed twixt calloused fingers, and you brought it to your lips.
"We will travel in the ways of my house.”
"A bone flute? Sister, surely you do not intend to enter by Way?"
You smile plainly at the speaker. A wide, narrow eyed smile. For a moment, the smugness wavers on their lips. That’s when you press the instrument twixt your teeth like a knife to their heart. The notes ripple through the morning air, painting their resonances across the cliffsides of the harbor. A perfect acoustic chamber for that which is to come. You have been meticulous after all.
The earth trembles, as something titanic moves at your back. You do not turn your head to watch as whole sections of the cliffside, wrapped around your palace, move. You do not see endless fur fluff outwards from a long-deserved sleep.
But you hear it. The sound of a great beast uncurling itself from the hillside.
Not just any beast, a Queen of beasts, ruler of the great skies. Your bond mate.
The faces before you twist, from arrogant turns of the lip to clenched jaws and widening eyes.
Its shadow sweeps across the harbor, as the Matriarchal allies at your side shuffle to your right and out of the way. The Queens of the East, of the Barter, of the Great Mountains, move on instinct, before staring with slackened jaws.
A great serpentine snout, its skull dwarfing you 100-fold, hovers to your left, a hands length away, just above the water. Great branching antlers curl above its magnificent skull. Those spoiled interior Queens stare at the True Sky Dragon bound to your Noble Blood and are frozen in awe. This display might cost you, but you are past caring. A hand comes to rest against the fur just below her grand reptilian eye.
"For you see, Queens of the Interior, I have no need for war fleets." A lie, but an entertaining one for gravitas. "The Noble House of Colchis is the House of Dragons. And we go with the sky."
You made a small motion with your free hand. The dragon's musculature bunched and with an abrupt displacement of air, its snout arched up towards the heavens. A loud and thunderous bellow tears from deep within it's snaking shape.
Then lightning cracked the sky from between its teeth.