The Divine Defender X

Paliurus Squadron (III)

Kaleen tossed and turned in bed, trapped within her mind.

Illusory battles haunted her dreams. She found herself in the midst of a molten landscape, a fluid waste of liquid sand and mineral trees. A solution of every place she had ever imagined, and overwhelmed by enemies. Her blade swept clumsily over an Elven warrior in its faceless suit of armor, leaving her open for a brutish Sorian, who’s fists connected with her midsection like the hammer to a gong. An angel’s arachnid legs seized her and held her fast against a stone. All of her strength left her. Kaleen heard the aural chorus of her hymns but it gave her no advantage, no matter which spell she tried to sing. No fire appeared to sweep away her enemies and no force broke her bonds.

Spindly steel limbs forced her chin up and her eyes spread. Before her, Paliurus Squadron had been arranged in similar bonds. The Elf’s sword, the Sorian’s claws, the Angel’s sharp limbs, each caressed the vulnerable neck of a fellow sister whom she knew she had failed. One by one, she saw her squad mates beheaded, and suffered their lifeless eyes to stare into her own, each judging her unfit to lead.

A slight increase in pressure on her stomach woke Kaleen from an eternity of those dead eyes. She rose with a jump. Andante stood on a chair and had her hands tremulously over Kaleen’s body, shaking and squeezing and trying to wake her. When Kaleen awoke she nearly knocked Andante backward off the bed. It was still dark and the moon still high. The only illumination came from a tiny flickering white wisp the shape of a hummingbird, floating over Kaleen. The convent was dead silent. Kaleen had thought she’d spent years in torment, when it had been only a few hours since she first went to sleep.

“Kali, are you ill?” Andante said, before laying her hands on Kaleen’s sweat-soaked forehead. “Your head is infernally hot. And look at you! How you lost that nice coffee color to you, you’re almost the color of sand, you’re so pale! This is serious!”

“I’m fine,” Kaleen whimpered, “fine, just–“

“I’ll get you some cold nectar,” Andante said, though it sounded more like a request, “let me fetch that for you, just stay here and take those blankets off you.” A chill wracked all of Kaleen’s body when Andante’s face turned away, when the wisp left her to illuminate the door. Kaleen thrust forward to the edge of the bed and seized Andante’s arm, as though to prevent her from fading into some false oblivion.

“No!” She suddenly shouted. “Don’t go!”

When Kaleen tried to grapple her, Andante nearly from her chair again. The impropriety of her own voice and the tightness of her own grip on Andante’s arm struck Kaleen and her hands wilted. One by one under the soft lens of her roommate’s eyes, Kaleen’s fingers unwound and she drew slowly back, never more addled in her life than she was right then. She laid back on her pillow to avoid Andante’s downcast, confused expression. “I’ll be fine.” She whimpered. “Current events have merely stricken too suddenly.”

Andante took Kaleen’s hand. “Kali, this does not look fine at all. But if that’s your wish I’ll leave you alone.” The sadness and distance of her roommate’s face, despite the closeness their hands should have implied, made Kaleen all the more wretched. When Andante was about to vanish again into her bed, Kaleen had to fight everything to seize her again. Her head pounded and her whole body was hot and cold with sweat. She had heard before that sleep was the cousin of death – the two felt very sisterly that night.

The rest of her night was haunted by a different specter than death. This time it was cousin shame who decided to strike. Kaleen revisited those moments on the stone court, where it was so obvious that of all the misfits of Paliurus Squadron she was the greatest, because she was the fool leading the ship. In her dreams her squadmates were like apparitions, each a piece of history Kaleen hardly knew and hardly had any right to uncover. She saw them fade slowly in that stone court, turning their backs and leaving her with cold words and hard jeers. When Kaleen awoke the next morning, it was shame that haunted her more than death – because Kaleen knew it hadn’t been a dream. She knew that all that insecurity and ignorance first and foremost would be their destruction.

Kaleen looked out the window and saw the convent alive with activity. She saw the sun directly overhead and felt her eyes burning. She brought her face into her hands and wept silently. For the first time in years, she’d woken late. It was past morning now. She hadn’t bathed. She’d missed breakfast. Unaware of why these simple circumstances gave her such a torment, incapable of recalling her nasty dreams, Kaleen sobbed into her open hands.

Then there was a knock on the door. Kaleen rolled on her side to face the wall, her long messy mane and frizzy tail to visitor. “Good ‘noon,” Andante said.

Kaleen heard something clink on her table. “You know, I thought it would be pertinent if we called Shanti and Senka and such, and reconvened today at a more casual location, so that we might get to know the squadron a bit better, perhaps share tactics and all. We all sort of scattered awkwardly yesterday. Oh, and I got you a big bowl of stuff leftover from breakfast. It’s not warm, but it will be in a second.”Andante then took a deep breath.

The room suddenly filled with music.

Kaleen felt her chest deflate easily, the tenseness in her eyes and temples give way. A xylophone seemed to play, its bars rapped by an unseen force. Each tiny note built a rhythm in the air, a melody of striking simplicity, ever repeating like a lullaby. Along the wall she saw a faint tapestry of colors swirling with the rhythm, the expressions of the hymn magic upon the world. The xylophone gained company. Andante’s voice flowed with the phantom instrument, following the subdued beat, lending it a strange harmony. The words of the spirits flowed about the room like the tenderest wind. Andante urged the world to give its warmth, urged movement and existence to the aurora invisible among them all. In the span of seconds Kaleen experienced whole verses and implicitly knew their meaning. She felt herself raised into the air and falling, gently, within the calm of a golden storm, fire and light coalescing around the angelic voice at her every command.

In an abrupt instant, the music was gone.

“There, your food is hot now.” Andante said. Kaleen heard the chair slide and creak as Andante sat. “I need more practice with this hymn though. I need to be able to sing the Supplication To Mother Winter quicker than this. It’s very useful.”

“I think your singing style is lovely.” Kaleen said. She turned around with a smile.