1004. Exogignesthai, 4
(Rose)
They thought they were heading for the capital heart. But Beatrice headed for the ignominious head instead.
They followed different roads still heading inland, and now helped with some deserters that Redmia had brought against herself in her folly.
Beatrice now had the priceless weapon of Redmia to wear, although it bore the marks of the fight and field’s repairs.
They headed toward the fortress of this foolhardy lord they now kept in chains.
Redmia only muttered to herself now, in clearly repressed anger. Except when she saw Beatrice around, who had apparently become her arch-nemesis. The mere sight of her caused Redmia to yell in anger, or laugh ominously.
Some wondered openly if it was wise to keep her alive, and Beatrice admitted honestly they were right.
B - But winning is not enough. We have to do it right. Otherwise, it will just continue to shift back and forth the flames. As much as we hate it, we have to be better than that... Better than her. Animus or otherwise.
~
They reached the base that was almost a city dedicated to the mad hero. Its guards opened the doors to the disguised company. They thought their lord had been killed on the field of duty.
B - We saved her and bring her back for medical help. Where is the hospital?
Redmia gagged and in chains, tied and mute, was glaring fires, while being carried around and shoved like another prisoner. Many had been brought along the same road over time.
The group of fighters took over the main garrison without too much troubles and began exploring, looking for the countless prisoners that would have been gathered to work in there.
But there were no mines nor fields nor construction site where slave workers would be in numbers. The prison building was already mostly empty, and they could save only a handful of tired people there, far less than what they had expected to free.
Redmia was apparently giggling below her gag. Because they had no idea of the horrors left to discover.
She had quickly risen through the ranks of her country, faster than within Theos; because her folly could be put to use conquering lands, countries, and pacifying them even afterwards.
Beatrice and her comrades discovered more than a war factory devoted to the country; and more than laboratories devoted to getting more knowledge about the world for Theos.
Beyond the study of biology and human anatomy, and beyond the repurposing and reprogramming of flesh into monsters for military purposes, there was simply cruelty.
There was free sadism in how she treated the people brought in to her as cattle.
Long after dissections of the past centuries, cutting the dead to understand better the functions of the living, there was here the time for vivisection and cruel experiments.
That was still the tip of the horrifying iceberg she had built with her lackeys there. There was a collection of experiments underway on live people. Most of them had been amputated, reduced to all that was really useful keeping to observe the experiments.
The people brought here were guinea pigs, more than slaves. They were experimented upon without mercy with various procedures, chemicals, and foreign biological agents.
In the worst floors of her laboratories, Redmia had been using diseases as if only to torture people brought to her until they died, apparently. The virology department was a pit from hell.
Studying what no one else would be so inhuman to consider.
Their prisoner in binding, guilty of all these crimes, she kept giggling inconsiderably behind her ties, all along the way. She knew she was doomed and didn’t care.
Most prisoners freed along the way were just too damaged to even react to her presence. They were too weak to consider appreciating how the roles might finally be reversed. And she was plain insane it seemed, nowhere near a feeling of guilt.
Beatrice was puzzled and tried to look beyond the horror.
To understand the cause, the reason and meaning. Whether Redmia was acting in all this according to her Animus or her own personal insanity remained unclear to Beatrice.
It was shockingly impossible from everyone else’s perspective for god to advocate any of this.
Because if the factories for development and production of biological weaponry had been very active, helping her warmongering master. And even if her studies of biology had brought advancement for Theos; she had been desecrating everything on the largest scale ever conceived.
The monstrosities born here, apparently had brought a significant advantage to the new empire on the battlefields.
People were turned into hosts for all sorts of manufactured diseases, and were turned into biological horrors insulting altogether humanity, knowledge, god’s words, and nature.
She had used humans as framework to construct horrible things beyond anyone’s understanding. And these artificial monsters had slaughtered countless people during the empire’s wars.
B - What were you really trying to achieve?
Redmia only smirked, still apparently enjoying the shocks everyone felt.
Was there or could there really be a reason for this savagery?
After the laboratories of common torture and the factories, there had been the far more technologically advanced laboratories for viral engineering.
The only uses they had seen for them were in previous buildings, for torture and killing. But Redmia had apparently created far more than ever needed for the current wars.
Much to Redmia’s annoyance, the group of fighters and deserters were burning down methodically the evil works without waiting for orders nor answers.
In the last set of buildings of the campus, which were of unusual architecture and a little remote from everything else, they discovered a very different insight on things.
A different set of surprises came there.
These laboratories held more pieces of artificially manufactured fleshes, and pieces of monsters.
Organs and lumps of flesh were being designed, grown and stored like spare parts for machines.
Needless to say, the raw materials used to generate all these things came indirectly from everywhere else in this facility. The sewage treatment plant was disposing of the dead and producing most food for the tissues engineered in this town previously.
However in this building, they were not the same design as the gross and crude monsters meant for the empire.
Redmia had not only created diseases, she had used the transformative properties and other metabolic processes to create things in a new unexpected way.
The better artificial monsters came from there, but it was more than that.
There was a wide vivarium.
Creatures with scales that turned wide and long, but light. In the widest dome building with glass panels and ceiling, some of these odd monsters were flying.
B - What are these things...
New species of monsters the world had never seen. Not as repulsive nor obviously aggressive and meant for fighting. More like animals, but of an unusual profile and meant to be flying without engines.
Discovering with stupor these really alien looking things, Beatrice turned again toward her captured foe.
She was fuming, but petrified this time. It was not guilt, but an emotion spoke sharply this time.
B - This was... Your real Animus? To give life to these things... And everything else was just you...
The voice of god in the night had opened some knowledge and intuitions for her, about biological mechanics, metabolisms of new kinds, and overall engineering of these things.
She had obeyed her Animus and made these weird creatures come to life. Her passion and revelation had been the means and aim to create these things.
Nothing as nefarious as what she twisted these gifts for behind. She had corrupted these gifts for her cruel and ambitious purposes.
The investigation was cut short as the empire massive forces were converging to recover the place and perhaps the lady meant to rule it as well.
Sadly for Beatrice, there had been too few people left to save. The factories had worked continuously despite the owner’s absence. They had done everything possible for their initial goal, and they had witnessed the width of Redmia and her emperor’s madness; so now there was a new logical mission.
They had to try ending this mad ambition of conquest and the immoral tools of abhorrent nature they used. Or they would keep feeding these factories until no one but people like Redmia would throne.
People everywhere would be hunted down by monsters as if the prehistoric times were returning.
Someone heard how the empire’s army was gunning for their homeland’s union capital, because peculiar artefacts of great importance had been uncovered.
These laboratories had repurposed some of the prehistorical artefacts, but it had not struck Beatrice immediately. These new technologies were almost inconceivable.
What older power were they unbinding now to serve their unethical purposes?
What more could there be?
Unfortunately they were screams cutting short their investigations now.
Redmia had seized her opportunity as soon as the fights had reached the outside perimeter. Sacrificing even her arms into shreds in order to get away, she managed to do so.
Dripping blood, kicking open some dangerous locks for monster to keep her pursuers busy, Redmia fled wounded into the night, possibly pursued by some of her own creations.
Skirmishes started on all sides.
The intrusion into the enemy lands wouldn’t be able to go further or threaten the leader directly.
They had to be realistic and attempted to flee as well.
Only now, Beatrice was committed to follow her husband’s footsteps, to protect her older crumbling empire into war.
~
