The Alpha and the Omega: Act III | Chapter 3
05 Sep 2018User1355
ACT III - HEROINECHAPTER 3
The Clan Morgana dominated its sphere of Pegasi. The Wheel adorned the banners of cities great and small. Planetside hovels and magnificent space stations alike were ruled in Sola’s name. A thousand ships travelled like blood through veins across her empire at any given time. With them the fear and wonder of the Matriarch herself was delivered, either by their wares or by their bristling armaments. No port dared refuse the dock to such vessels, and even the legitimate governments of the outer Bubble knew to look the other way when the ebony-hulled ships from Pegasi conducted business within their borders.
Sola Morgana and Maximilian Ortega ruled from their joint thrones on New Cambria. Though their union was strong politically, Matriarch and Patriarch spent more and more time apart. Sola of course favored her pet project of Dinas Wrach, ever adding to its grandeur. Maximilian preferred the city of Caerdinas, for its was one of the only proper starports on the entire planet. New Cambria was in that time a wild place, an untamed place- Caerdinas was the exception, not the rule. Yet with the Clan’s success came those who sought to bask in it, and the city grew ever larger. Soon it became something akin to cosmopolitan, or as close as a city within the outlaw sector of Pegasi could get to it. Languages of all kinds supplanted the dominant New Cambrian at the teeming markets.
Dinas Wrach was its opposite. Whereas Maximilian had thrown the doors open to every clanner with credits in their purse, Sola’s City of the Crone grew ever more insular. Fewer and fewer foreigners were allowed within its gleaming white boundaries, and those who were tended to be priestesses or those young women bound to them in tutelage. The women were not prohibited from marrying- the Crone was the final essence of womanhood, after all- coming after the stages of maiden and motherhood. All were honored, and in their view all were a valid part of a woman’s journey. To deny such to their own would be hypocritical in the extreme.
Yet to wed a priestess of the Crone was often a political union as much as it was a personal one. To have the ear of a priestess- even a junior one- was to have a direct line to Sola Morgana’s court. The secular and the divine mixed amid the gleaming towers of Dinas Wrach, and thus did the worldly concerns of politics in time pollute the purity of the order. Factions within the priestesshood emerged, some concerned with piety and others with political pull. The Crone’s council that fell from their lips came to resemble with remarkable coincidence their own.
Arcturus’s star continued to rise, his exploits as a raider impressing even his rivals. So too was Aelina no wallflower. With the savage devotion of a clanswoman in love she was at her warrior-mate’s side, sharing the danger and passion of his- their- lives. She was in many ways like her mother-in-law during her tragically brief union with Cassian, wild-eyed and never more alive than when at his side in the midst of a raid. Never had there been a more enthusiastic adoptee of the name “Morgana”. During one close call a Gal-Cop task force ambushed the clansmen, jumping into their position en mass around them, bearing down with weapons deployed and demanding that they identify themselves. In a moment of inspiration Aelina unsheathed her blade, cutting away the shoulders of her flightsuit in the manner of the Serpents of Njikas. Wheels and teeth were bared with equal ferocity. With an astonished Arcturus looking on she opened a general channel for friend and foe alike to witness her action, defiantly addressing her ambushers.
“Now you know who you face,” she declared. “No mere bandits, but the sons and daughters of New Cambria itself. The Void blesses our every action- can you say the same?”
Though young, her words and conviction stirred her kinsman to martial brilliance, and even outnumbered they fought like warrior-poets, sparing not a single Gal-Cop ambusher. In their youthful passion Arcturus and Aelina fell into a carnal frenzy right there in the battle’s aftermath, amid the bodies and blasted wreckage drifting just beyond the hull of their ship. Such heroics only increased their prestige, and the couple were for the first time seen as gods-blessed heirs, and not merely competent of spring of clan royalty.
All was well for the Clan Morgana, yet not. Like the mightiest of fortresses it was unassailable from the outside, yet vulnerable to the weaknesses of mortals residing within. Many were those who coveted position within this fortress, and many were the unscrupulous methods employed to gain such. Whispers found their way into the ears of the priestesses, and these whispers in turn found their way into the aging ears of Sola Morgana herself. The union between her firstborn son and Aelina of the Clan Cadiz was perfect, it was conceded. Perfect in all regards, except one:
Aelina had yet to conceive a child, they hissed- and every day that passed without her doing so was a step further from the gods’ favor.
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