The voices of children drift through the air.
“My son, my daughter, now that you bleed, you shall know no fear.” A young virgin girl with hair
of white and feet bare on cold metal panels walks through the lines of kneeling giants carrying an iron dagger that drips with Aureate blood. “No defeat.”
Gold armor etched with deeds of their ancestors. The boy’s cloak innocent as snow. “Only victory.”
She slices the already-injured hand of Romulus au Raa, whose eyes are closed, his dragon armor white and smooth as ivory as his other hand holds his eldest son’s hand. The boy is no older than seventeen, only just having won his year at the Ganymede Institute. His eyes are flashing and wild for the day. If only his intrepid young soul knew what waited on the other side of the hour. His older cousin kneels by his side, her hand on his knee. Her brother beside her. The family forming a chain across the bridge. “Your cowardice seeps from you.” Behind the girl, more children walk through the fold, carrying the four standards of Gold—a scepter, a sword, and a scroll crowned with a laurel.
“Your rage burns bright.” She holds up the dripping dagger before Kavax au Telemanus and his youngest daughter Thraxa, a wild haired, freckle-faced, squat girl with her father ’s laugh and Pax’s simple kindness. “Rise, children of Ilium, warriors of Gold, and take with you your Color ’s might.”
Two hundred Gold Praetors and Legates rise. Mustang and Romulus at their head, flanked by the
Telemanuses and House Arcos. Mustang lifts up her hand and smears the blood upon her own face.
Two hundred killers join her, but I do not. I watch from the corner with Sefi as the combined officer corps of my Gold allies honors their Ancestors. Martian Reformers, Rim tyrants, old friends, old enemies clutter the bridge of Mustang’s flagship, the two-hundred-year-old dreadnought Dejah Thoris.
“The battle today is to decide the fate of our Society. Whether we live under the rule of a tyrant or whether we carve our own destiny.” Mustang catalogues the list of enemies for the day’s hunt. “Roque au Fabii, Scipia au Falthe, Antonia au Severus-Julii, Cyriana au Tanus.” Thistle. “These are wanted lives.”
I’ve been here before, witnessing this benediction, and I can’t help but feel I will be here again. It has lost none of its luster. None of the grandeur that so sheathes this remarkable people. They go to death not for the Vale, not for love, but for glory. We have never seen a race quite like them, nor will we again. After months surrounded by the Sons of Ares I see these Golds less as demons than falling angels. Precious, flaring so brilliantly across the sky before disappearing beyond the horizon.
But how many more days like this can they afford?
In the halls of our enemies, Roque will be reciting our names, and the names of my friends. He who kills the Reaper will have glory unending, bounty and renown. Young beasts with wide shoulders and angry eyes straight from the halls of the Core’s schools will hunt me. Ready to make their name.
So too will the old Gray legionnaires hunt me. Those who see my rebellion as the great threat against mother Society. Against that union which they have loved and fought for their entire lives.
And Obsidian will seek me, led by masters who promised them Pinks in exchange for my head. They
will hunt my friends. They will say Sevro’s name, and Mustang’s, and Ragnar ’s because they do not yet know he is gone from us. They will hunt the Telemanuses and Victra, Orion, and my Howlers. But they cannot have them. Not today.
Today I take.
I stand looking down at my Gold allies. I am encased in militarized metal. Two point one meters
tall, one hundred and sixty kilograms of death in a pulseArmor suit of blood-red. My slingblade is coiled around my right vambrace just above the wrist. A gravFist on my left hand. Built for collisions in corridors today, not speed. Sefi is just as monstrous as I in her brother ’s armor. Hate in her eyes seeing this host of enemies.
My allies needed to see her. To see me. To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Reaper is more alive than ever. Many of the Martians fell with me in the Rain. Some look at me with hate.
Others with curiosity. And some—a very few—salute. But from most there’s a contempt that will never be washed away. That’s why I brought Sefi. Absent love, fear will do nicely in a pinch.
Upon hearing news that Roque’s fleet has begun its journey from Europa, I make my farewell to
Romulus and his coterie of Praetors who helped devise our battle plan. Romulus’s handshake is firm.
Respect between us, but no love. In the hangar, I say goodbye to Mustang and the Telemanuses. The