13. Monster All
Darkness and dreams.
Chain links clicking together, the toughest titanium known, stronger even than hardened Tempest hull.
Chain that held her down, heavy.
Dreams.
The Septum Collar prevented her from sleeping in any position other than upright, the whole of the device securely locked by oldfashioned keyed locks. Crude, iron and heavy, she had become tolerant of being secured inside it despite the obvious use as a form of continuous torment. No doubt it had been used to torture prisoners since the earliest Amarri beginnings after the collapse of the EVE Gate.
People in her dreams.
The cell prevented her from moving too far in any one direction, barely three meters by three meters. Combined with the wrists shackles and tethered to the wall by a length of chain, her mobility was restricted to a third of that.
Her brother in her dreams.
Her brother, Daison, interrogated her daily. At least she thought it was daily. Nothing of the world outside gave her any indication as to the time of the day, or how long she had been imprisoned here. All of that time in the cell gave her time to think and remember. She had tried to kill him after she had received his communiqué while still Dean of the Republic Military School Extension, after she had traveled to him in Amarri space, after she had learned he had planned a trap for her.
The Amarri standing behind her brother in her dreams.
Daison set his trap well, and she barely escaped. He revealed their blood bond, and she hesitated one moment too long. His pistol fired. If it had not been for the dreams of her childhood, she would have died. Those childhood dreams gave her a path to follow, down along the river to the paddies of the Kador slavery. She had dreamed it so many times, even her nearly unconscious mind and pain-ridden body remembered the way.
The old Matari standing in the Sehmy Main Square in her dreams.
Returning to Sehmy had been difficult for her, but the trap Daison had set was well thought out. He had proof of the Sehmy uprising on holo-vid, which wasn't the most important thing he relayed to her. In his search for evidence of the Amarri cover-up, he found a woman living as a slave to a farmer out in the East paddies. The woman was her sister. Neither bit of information was strong enough for her to believe his word, but he sent along a piece of the evidence as proof. She immediately resigned as Dean of the RMS - two hours later, she was in her Scythe, heading to Sehmy.
The old Matari set on fire by the Amarri mobs in her dreams.
She kept her hands resting on the floor rather than in her lap. The weight of the wrist shackles would cause her legs to go numb. Her bare feet were tucked under her knees, and she used what little of the garb her jailors had provided to keep her skin from touching the metal floor.
Daison walked into her dreams as he usually walked into her cell, carrying a chair. The old Matari burned, never having screamed, and Daison sat in his chair watching her as she watched the slave burn. The smoke from the charring body became a thick cloud, the whole of the Main Square and the cheering of the Amarr mob falling away, even the ground seeming to fall away. Only Daison remained, still sitting in his chair, holding a large book.
The old Emperor in her dreams.
A hand lifted up the cheering mobs from deep in the smoke, and these Amarri climbed along the arm, up the shoulder and clutched at the ears of the Emperor. She watched all this from the chair that Daison had been sitting in, her brother now nowhere to be seen.
As he sprang his trap, he laughed. Yes, he had evidence of the uprising, and yes, there was a sister - but also a brother. Half-brother to be more precise. He held his pistol to her chest, smiling and laughing. She remembered that laugh, and she didn't wonder what had happened to the happy little boy she knew. She had murdered his mother after all. The trap had been a long time in coming. His Right of Retribution was at hand.
Their Master had raped her mother several times. Both Gaelbhan and Airgoidh were half-Amarr, and Daison was their brother.
Darkness and dreams.