ACT III: L'heure fatidique

"Why?" I screamed at Merrimont, struggling to be heard above the horrid thunder of shivering stone and howling winds. "Why did you not shoot me?"

There was no time to respond. Merrimont pushed me out of the way and flung himself down next to me as Merphomenee's massive hand reached down towards us. She plucked Renia up from the ground, the marquise's horrified shrieking receding rapidly as the goddess fastened three fingers around her. The hand and its prisoner moved inexorably to the well; Merphomenee dropped Renia in as Merrimont and I watched transfixed in morbid horror. From this distance we could not hear her wretched screams; my last sight of my friend was one of a distant woman flailing in a torn gray dress with her black hair whipping wildly about her as she disappeared past the lip of the gate, a recreant reclaimed by the unstoppable power of her mistress.

Merphomenee now stood to her full height, striking me speechless with her presence. Every bit as elegant and monumental as I so clearly remembered, the goddess wore a beautiful silk dress fashioned in the ornate Theraverian style, a maroon bodice crossed with ornate golden filigree and dressed with laces on the hems. Underneath she wore a corset to shape her slender figure. From our worms' perspective her breasts hung heavily within her low-cut neckline, a dozen thick corset stays straining heroically to contain their ample mass from spilling forth. The sleeves were bound at her elbows by ribbons and opened into elongated trailing tassels which flowed down her skirts, leaving her snowy white hands and lower arms bare with each finger tipped by a flawlessly manicured nail painted plum purple. She wore a golden girdle around her slim waist which had been embroidered with motifs from Illyrican mythology, cinched with velvet straps. Her voluminous dress rustled like an entire forest come to life with every grand step she took, for she wore another layer underneath her violet overskirt and white petticoats beneath those. White stockings peeped from beneath the menagerie of her skirts; with a pang in my heart I realized she wore the same shoes she had forced Leannia and myself to sleep within, fancy slippers with a formidable heel tall enough to walk upright underneath the arch. Some of her braids were plaited with golden ribbons which gleamed in sharp contrast to her scarlet tresses, and I noted with horror that she still wore dozens of elegant silver cages with men imprisoned inside on her skirts. Her perfume of rainflowers and honey wafted over me as she stepped over Merry and myself in a careless stride, the sky briefly darkening under a sea of skirts and petticoats. So accoutred in a ransom sufficient for ten kings, Merphomenee spared myself and Merrimont not a further glance as she turned her attention to the helpless city of Louelle. In one prodigious step she crossed the broad Carbannes River, the earth collapsing several paces beneath her ponderous tread wherever she placed her foot.

His face twisted in anguish as the titanic goddess descended upon the city, Merrimont cried, "Even for the world, how could I slay the woman I love?" Together we stared after Merphomenee, our hearts broken by fear of the slaughter to come.

Louelle, oh ma belle ville Louelle, what sin did you commit to be treated so cruelly at the hands of a pitiless goddess? She overshadowed the streets and apartments on the edge of the capital; though Merrimont and I stood too far to hear, I knew thousands must be screaming and wailing in terror at the sight of her. With one nonchalant step she obliterated the five-story housing ward at the edge of the Carbannes, renowned for its view of the lazy river. The apartment crumbled like a brittle cake underneath her slipper, the unfortunate occupants rendered extinct in a terrible instant.

I fell sobbing to my knees, the despairing sense of failure weighing heavily on my shoulders. Merrimont tried to catch a stray horse, but the animals had all turned crazed with terror. Taking the royal coach back to the city was out of the question and I had a brief argument with Merrimont wherein he urged me to flee posthaste; I replied that if he intended to return and fight, so would I. By dint of great effort we managed to calm a pair of war-trained stallions sufficiently for ourselves to mount and ride back across the bridge over the Carbannes. Merrimont urged his horse towards the city arsenals and I followed closely, my heart racing with fear. The city quaked underneath every stomp of Merphomenee's feet; we were forced to navigate around towering wreckage and deep shoeprints more than once, testimony to her unstoppable might. What would happen to us now?

In spite of my terror, I resolved to try and appeal to the goddess' mercy. Merrimont warned me not to go; heedless, I left him and raced to Merphomenee, pushing and urging my horse past throngs of citizens fleeing in panic. I saw her shoe descend upon the barber house at the intersection of the Rue de Poissons, the storefront immediately vanishing in a cloud of dust as the adjacent buildings trembled from the impact. All around me lay the crushed bodies of the poor victims who had failed to escape from the goddess' deadly tread, often marked by little more than bloody smears or limbs and heads separated from their owners. I coughed from the dust and smoke, tearing strips from my dress to mask my face as I urged my mount onwards. Merphomenee came to a belfry with an abandoned brass bell, whereupon she knelt and flicked it away with one dainty finger. The bell sounded once with a sharp peal as it sailed away to the far shore of the Carbannes.

I drew rein as closely as I dared, my horse having vaulted over crushed cobblestone roads, demolished buildings, and the snapped trunks of the many trees that once lined our streets. Only with difficulty did I succeed in controlling my mount, his nostrils no doubt awash with the terror sown by the goddess; when I dismounted, my horse immediately bolted away. "Merphomenee! Please, halt!" I screamed up at her. I could not tell if she even heard me; coming to a whitewashed, square apartment building, the goddess reached down with her hand and tore away a fistful that encompassed several rooms. I saw hapless men and women fall screaming out of her hand as she opened her fingers to drop a rain of demolished plaster and brick onto the chaotic streets below, covering my face to protect myself from the scattering hail of pebbles. Dozens of screaming families had stopped within a cul-de-sac at the end of the street, unable to flee further. Their frightened wails were drowned out by a fearful step of her slipper as I vainly entreated her to stop, immediately crushing a score of citizens and scattering the rest. Merphomenee drew her foot up and walked through the building in her way to descend upon the next avenue without even sparing a glance down for the lives she had so callously ended.

In my own slippers I could in no wise hope to reach her before she stepped further, so I peeled my pumps off. Panting from the exertion and the dust, I stopped in horror to gaze at the devastated scene of butchery which had just befallen. Crushed bones and gore littered the road where a massive indentation three paces deep had been made in the shape of a feminine slipper, mothers wailing for children slain and children crying for parents taken from them. A few men had been trapped beneath falling rubble and the citizens of Louelle struggled to free them. I heard a weak voice calling for me - "Please ... lady ..." - and I saw a man who had just lost one leg where Merphomenee's sharp heel had descended too close. He was missing his limb from mid-thigh down and he lay on his back in the middle of the street next to the hole gouged out by her stiletto stem, blood seeping from his torn trousers. "... A smoke ..." he gasped.

"Be brave!" I cried to him, seizing his arms and trying to drag him away. He proved far too heavy for me to move. "You will live!"

"No chance ... smoke ..." he wheezed, offering me his pipe.

There being no help for the matter, I seized the proffered pipe and lit it from one of the dozens of fires that seemed to have sprang up in Merphomenee's wake. I carried it back to the man, where he inhaled with a gasp as I held it to his lips. A thin wisp of scented tobacco fumes exhaled from his nostrils. He closed his eyes with a sigh and expired.

The peal of the city cannons announced that some Theraverian gunners had unlimbered the culverins and trained them upon Merphomenee. As I raced towards her, now on bare feet heedless of the bruising and cuts to my soles, I saw her smile in amusement at the frantic artillerymen. At close range they could not miss her voluminous gowns and the lower skirts of her dress were shot to tatters in short order, but the cannonballs bounced harmlessly off her divine skin even at point-blank range. I saw a squadron of cavaliers form and shoot their carbines at her feet with equal futility; she contemptuously swept them away with the arc of her slipper, crushing half of the brave men. Infantrymen three lines deep formed a wall of bristling bayonets and fired a volley of balls at the invincible goddess to no effect; Merphomenee ignored them as harmless nuisances until she deigned to step upon their massed ranks as well, reducing entire disciplined companies to leaderless squads in one horrifying instant. Oh courageous Theraverians, may your futile heroism live forever in the hearts of your surviving countrymen! I caught a stray horse and raced after Merphomenee again, crying up at her to cease her rampage.

I saw her head turn as her ears heard my plaintive cries, but she only gazed down imperiously at me. Then she deliberately raised her foot and set it down upon the beautiful Museum of Art, obliterating one of the gallery wings with its priceless oil paintings and wonderful sculptures with an insouciant step. The hapless citizens who had fled cowering into the museum for shelter now began to stream out, but not quickly enough; right before my horrified eyes, she demolished the other two wings and the heart of the building with a series of quick trots, almost as if dancing the minuet for me. This done, Merphomenee dipped in a mocking curtsy to me and regally swept away, leaving only dust and misery behind her.

I wanted to faint. I thought my heart would break from the suffering she so relentlessly caused, an unstoppable engine of destruction bent upon razing my beautiful Louelle, but even that relief was denied to me. Watching Phinos burn from her perspective had been agonizing enough, and now I witnessed this tragedy from the vantage of a mere mortal woman! Doggedly I gave chase, watching from afar as she pushed over the golden dome of the Royal Bank of Louelle and scattered all the treasures of its vaults with effortless strides. Gold ingots, innumerable thalers, and priceless heirlooms of jewels rained down on the cobblestone paths around the ruined bank, but the foolish citizens who scrambled for their wealth soon met death under Merphomenee's soles. She must have decided that she had suffered the insolence of the cannon enough as well, for the goddess turned and strolled unhurriedly towards the batteries established on the main boulevard of the city, her tattered dress scraping tiles off the roofs in her wake. This afforded the cannoneers a clear and unobstructed view of their target; they fired and their shots ricocheted harmlessly off her skin or merely expended themselves on her petticoats. The uniformed infantry formed a square of muskets to protect the great guns and their bullets proved equally useless against the goddess. Amused by their courageous futility, Merphomenee knelt and picked up one of the falconets with its barrel still smoking, holding it up to the sun to examine the detail. Following Brabantine tradition, each cannon had the words "Ultima Ratio Regum" stamped upon it from the forge; Merphomenee crushed the falconet between her fingers before carelessly dropping it. When she lifted her foot over the artillerymen they immediately abandoned their pieces and fled with cries of "Sauve qui peut!"

How can I fault them? The brave men who fought died in vain, powerless before Merphomenee's might. Command of the army and the prefects quickly broke down, unequal as they proved to the terrible adversary whom they could neither slow nor harm. I saw a few companies of the Brabantines enter the city to treat the wounded and attempt to usher our families out, bless their dauntless courage, but they fared no better than we. The surviving members of the Princess' Own Guard Knights perished that day as victims of her invincibility. She wandered outside of the city for a time and I hoped against hope that we might be spared further injury, but the sight of her stomping on the cultivated grounds told me that she simply wreaked havoc on the elegant manors of the nobility which lay outside the city. Flocks of cattle and herds of horses in her path were not spared. The beautiful estate of the Duc d'Estang, where I had agreed to become the goddess' student in the magical arts during the debutante dance, turned to rubble beneath her slippers. Nor was the estate of the Marquis de Vautonlieu passed over and he himself perished like countless others under Merphomenee's sole, never knowing what had become of his lovely wife. A quarter of the nobility perished on that dreadful day, including many of my treasured friends with whom I had fond memories. We Theraverians as a rule are not spiritual people, but I heard earnest prayers all around me in the face of Merphomenee's unbridled power.

The flags and tents of the Brabantine army besieging Louelle had been struck not long after Merphomenee's entry to the city. Some of the horsemen managed to save themselves by scattering, but the massed men now suffered under her power as Merphomenee trampled upon them. Their musketry and cannonry availed them nothing, picking off a few of the caged prisoners she wore as a fashion statement but unable to so much as scratch her skin. She showed no regard for the laws of war, her bloodsplattered shoes obliterating the field hospitals with their patients and creating thousands more invalids among the Brabantine army. Dust and smoke soon obscured any sight of the Brabantine camps from the city; only the fearful thunder of her footsteps reminded us constantly of the relentless devastation she wrought upon our quondam adversaries, now united with us as equal victims of a heartless goddess. The sensible Brabantines fled across the Theraverian countryside; but many of their companies had been entrenched too closely to the city to do more than flee within.

She turned to the city again once she had satisfied herself that the countryside had been suitably devastated. Hapless refugees caught fleeing on the roads from Louelle were reduced to dust beneath her soles; this time she reached down and tore apart the bridges over the river Carbannes or simply stepped upon them as she returned, trapping those who could not ford the river on the east side of the city. L'auditorium Populaire with its distinct flat roof she did not spare, the great opera house so grand that even she was obliged to leave more than a score of footprints within its ruined grounds. Before the theater stood a sculpture of a general carved by the great Aguierre; towering over men on his rearing horse, it looked comically insignificant next to Merphomenee's ankles, and the goddess placed the arch of her heel over the statue, decapitating the stone equine and breaking off the man's granite torso. I flung myself at Merphomenee's feet beseeching her to halt her rampage, throwing my arms around a frightened child as though my pitiful self could protect her; she simply stepped around me. A pitiful sight I must have been, covered in dust and grime with my face and hair blackened by soot and smoke, my dress torn, stained by the sweat of exertion and the gore of our helplessness. Yet somehow the goddess still knew me.

Merphomenee stepped on a glassworker's shop as she traipsed unhurriedly towards the Rue d'Hiver, scattering fragments of glass in every direction. In panic lest she destroy the beautiful salon where the Comtesse de Rouillart and her coterie of learned men congregated, I pushed my mount thither and reached the building before Merphomenee managed to tread upon it. I cried for Merphomenee to stop as I dismounted and raced inside; the comtesse herself was present, tight-lipped and pale of face, but otherwise the salon had been abandoned. Under the rumor of her steps much of the beautiful pottery and the dishware had shattered on the floor. Before I could explain myself to her, Merphomenee's slipper broke through the ceiling and I screamed as the entire building collapsed around me. I found myself beneath the shank of her shoe, protected from the falling rubble by her intervening foot above my quaking head, but the comtesse did not share my fortune. When Merphomenee withdrew her foot and sunlight poured in, I found the comtesse pinned beneath a fractured cabinet that the building had fallen upon. "Oh oh! I shall find help for you! Help us! Is anyone out there?" I cried, calling for aid.

"Nevermind me!" the comtesse cried. "Save yourself and those you can!" Seeing the comtesse stuck firmly beneath the wreck of the salon and no one able to render aid, I reluctantly left her behind mutually weeping. Later I learned that she perished when the flames spread to the ruined building. So too did most of the salon's intellectual circle, many of Louelle's brightest sons and daughters.

Dust and fire choked the street, obscuring my vision. I could only tell where Merphomenee walked now by the thunderous quaking which emanated from her every step. All around me people screamed and fled and hid, trapped in the city by destroyed buildings or deep shoeprints. She destroyed the Odeum de Chapplette without so much as a sentimental thought; not one of Louelle's theaters or opera houses survived her rampage. The great cathedral on the banks of Carbannes she also demolished, paying no heed to any claims that a rival religion might have on affinity with the divine. The Carbannes river ran brown with dust and mud for a week after her destructive tour through Louelle.

In bare and bleeding feet I could not hope to keep pace with the lethal goddess. I wandered blankly through the city attempting to follow the goddess' steps when a man rode out of the dust and swept me up behind him on his horse; my brother in an army uniform, every bit as disheveled as I, riding one of the very few serviceable remaining mares. "Sister, you are safe!" he shouted, his voice breaking with relief. "Please, flee at once! The city is doomed!"

"Brother!" I could have wept at the sight of him. "No, please! The goddess may listen to me if I humble myself before her enough! Oh, this is all my fault! I should never have come back!"

"Nonsense, Summer!" He had to shout above the din to be heard as he struggled to control his mount. A particularly loud series of crashes announced the destruction of Louelle's oldest library with its priceless archive of irreplaceable books. "She is beyond reason! Mother is hiding in the palace and refuses to leave. Please, go and convince her to flee with you, sister!"

Startled by this news, I coughed and shouted back, "Then I'll go! But what of papa?"

"Father is in command of the few soldiers still able to fight," Charlemont yelled.

"And Sir Merrimont? What will you do, brother?"

"I have not seen or heard of Sir Merry. Worry not for me, I will try to keep our people moving along the only roads that are still passable out of the city!" he cried. The mare struggled to bear both of us, so I dismounted a safe distance away from the giantess who even then rampaged through the markets. My brother put his spurs to the horse and raced into the smoky mayhem again, covered in dust. That was the last time I saw Crown Prince Charlemont Hafarlin alive in this world, a hero and martyr to the Theraverian people at the tender age of nineteen.

My feet ached from all the running and riding I had done, my tender soles bruised by the paved streets and my lungs gasping for clean air. Worse, I felt Merphomenee's footsteps approaching steadily as she turned her attention towards some domiciles she had left undisturbed until now. When her enormous feminine silhouette materialized out of the dust almost directly above me, I screamed and threw myself to the ground. For a heartstopping moment I feared she would tread upon me; instead, her fingers gently lifted me up off the street and without a word she carried me to the royal palace, clear of much of the smoke and dust rising from the burning city. I could feel her mighty footsteps through the vibrations of her skin, and I screamed hoarsely from the vertigo. I also screamed appealing to her to stop, begging her to stay her hand and spare my people, humbling myself so far as to kiss her gore-stained hand in supplication; she blithely ignored me. The people and animals who vanished beneath her shoes did not even give her pause. She laid me down on the balcony outside of my bedchamber, this tall protrusion overtopped by her waist, and when I turned my head to look up at her face I instead saw a mountainous bosom looming ominously above me. Merphomenee stepped away to resume her annihilatory spree.

I wasted no time after throwing on a pair of comfortable shoes, rushing through the palace corridors searching frantically for my mother. Many of the expensive vases and paintings in the royal palace had toppled from the shockwaves of Merphomenee's steps, lying broken and fractured on the thick carpet. Citizens of Louelle milled helplessly in the halls where they had taken shelter from the goddess' rampage; frantically I asked where the queen might be and called for people to flee before Merphomenee came to destroy the palace, but few heeded me in the chaotic panic which had enveloped the entire horde. I saw mothers trying to comfort terrified children, elderly men and women staggering about supporting each other, a few looters stealing valuables from the palace, even some Brabantine soldiers seeking shelter, and the cries of fear crescendoed every time the palace shook from a nearby footfall. Why did they hide here? Did they imagine that the goddess would actually spare this building, the grandest in all Louelle? I shook dust from my hair and passed through the throne room; mother was not present. I found one of the few domestic servants who had remained and bid her direct me to mother. She told me that the queen had gone to the music hall and then fled.

I found mother sitting in the music room with her ladies-in-waiting, all clutching their fans fearfully, fervent prayers for mercy mixed amid their lamentations. "Mother, mother!"

"Is that ... is that Summerlyn, my dear daughter?" Queen Heloise exclaimed, staring at my dusty and bedraggled dress and my blood encrusted skin. She had lost her spectacles somewhere. "Oh child, you are safe!"

"Mother, please, flee at once! She will destroy the palace when she is done with the city!" I cried. Just as Merphomenee had reserved the grand temple in Phinos as a pièce de résistance, so I feared how she conspicuously avoided the royal palace. "Please, listen to me! Father and Charlemont are taking refugees from Louelle and we must join them!" I begged desperately.

Mother stared at me, uncomprehending. "... Summerlyn, no, it is too dangerous outside! Stay with your dear old mother," she murmured faintly. She would not be moved; the calamity befalling the city had robbed the poor woman of all wit. I heard her feebly calling for one of the coterie to amuse them with a song on the harp. She also called for King Marchand and Prince Charlemont, anxiously asking if any man who raced past the doors were her husband or son. Tears fell and washed my cheeks as I pleaded and begged, but in the end I had to abandon my mother and her circle. My final sight of her was through tearstained eyelashes, sitting in the music room fanning herself and crying for me to return as I fled. Sometimes in my saddest nightmares I still see her so clearly, heartbroken by my abandonment, her plaintive voice winding like a skein of yarn through my dreams begging me not to leave her. Always I am reluctant to awaken in tears with my grief renewed. Oh mère, pardonne ta fille!

At the vestibule of the palace I forced my way out against the contrary throngs of wretched survivors crowding through the doors, brown and dusty from the chaos. Flames had spread throughout the city, giving rise to a hazy gray smoke which obscured much of the sunlight, but the steady earthquake of a giantess' tread assured me that Merphomenee's destructive tour continued unabated. I do not know if my heart could have withstood the sight of Louelle's beautiful architecture and ancient heritage vanishing to satisfy her vengeful lusts. The city zoo was reduced to an unrecognizable collection of footprints and mangled bodies contorted in bloody corpses within feminine shoe craters. The beautiful Université Venteuse she trampled into dust, destroying the institute where generations of the finest Theraverian minds had studied, leaving only a ruined husk of a campus. I saw a few uniformed soldiers directing refugees away from the palace and towards the streets. From them I discovered that the southwest road out of Louelle could still carry traffic and I fled thither, too disoriented to discern cardinal directions and only mingling with the frightened masses of humanity tramping that way.

Before we reached the city limits, however, Merphomenee circled around into our path. The throng of refugees quailed, unwilling to risk the imminent danger, and then we screamed and fled as she began to trample upon the fleeing crowds. Blood ran freely through the streets; so many perished beneath her soles that for weeks afterwards the roads themselves turned greasy with human lipids. Trapped by rubble on all sides, my poor people had no chance at all to hide themselves. Most who could not run tried to beg for mercy, but she ignored them all and crushed them without so much as a considering glance. Her bloody slipper descended upon me as well and I shrieked in fear, but for a second time that day I found myself cowering underneath her arch as the family next to me vanished beneath her sole, plunged into the reeking smell of blood and flesh for a nauseous moment. I fell to the stones from the shock of the step; when she lifted her shoe and walked away, I was left the only unhurt survivor of over two score men and women caught by her tread. Next to me a young child vainly clutched a bloody severed arm, all that was of her mother.

Words do not suffice to describe the suffering that my people - and yes, our erstwhile Brabantine enemies too - endured that day. Merrimont found me in my bloodstained and dusty dress then as Merphomenee heartlessly stepped away; he too had been wounded where a shivered timber fell on his arm and he clutched his sides with his good hand. He had lost his weapons. "Your Highness!"

"Merry! You still live!" I cried. I collapsed against his body, overwhelmed by the shock and the horror, surrounded by a sea of the dead and dying as the stench of bodies assailed my nostrils. How well the carrion birds feasted! I leaned against him as he struggled to bring me out of the burning city, always glancing fearfully around ourselves whenever the ground shook beneath Merphomenee's steps. "You should have killed me when you had the chance!" I reproached him bitterly. He made no reply, but the agonized expression twisted on his face told me that he must also have sorely repented of his restraint.

At the edge of the city we paused. The omnipresent smoke and dust cleared for brief moments; the sun burned low in the late afternoon - how few hours had passed since the goddess first climbed out of the gate? Oh how foolish we had been, blindly constructing the very cause of our demise! I clutched Merrimont's arm in horror as I saw Merphomenee finally turn her attention to the royal palace, its white walls, beautiful glass windows, and lofty turrets comically diminutive when overshadowed by the goddess' gigantic body. She methodically stepped all around the palace first, overthrowing the lovely gardens in which she and I had once spent so much time absorbed in idle gossip and lessons of magic. The wretched escapees from the city now lay trapped within the palace with nowhere to flee. The goddess dismantled my lovely home, plucking up the towers and peeling away the roofs to expose the terrified people within. From time to time she would grasp an individual whom she fancied in her slender fingers and lift him or her clear before carelessly tossing the body away. Then she began to press her hands to the walls and tear the stones with her slippers. I watched mesmerized by horror, spellbound by her cruelty as she razed the palace down to its foundations, leaving only a handful of survivors traumatized by her indifferent power. Nothing survived of the palace save rubble and ruin.

I buried my head in Merrimont's shoulder and wept unabashedly when Merphomenee finished the palace, throwing my arms around him disconsolately. In one brutal afternoon she had destroyed my world with minimal effort. Merrimont wept too, that brave and chivalrous gentleman equally helpless in the face of the goddess. He attempted to flee as Merphomenee's footsteps drew near, pulling my dusty glove and my leaden feet as her immense hand closed around us, such was the despair that had drained my will. She placed me in one bloody palm and effortlessly separated him from me, holding him in her other hand. Vainly I reached for his comforting presence; he futilely stretched his arms to me as well.

"No! Spare him! Si vous avez encore de l'affection pour moi!" I cried to her.

Merphomenee squeezed; he vanished instantly into her cruel fist. Brave, chivalrous Merrimont, to whom I had lost my heart, who might in time have replaced the goddess in my esteem - a final victim of my foolishness. When she opened her fingers again his body could not be distinguished from any of the other bits of viscera clinging to her skin.

I screamed then, a horrible anguished wail keening from my lips. I furiously beat my tiny fists against Merphomenee's soft palm, succeeding only in bruising myself. I shrieked my hatred for her into her impassive face as she lifted me up to her eyes, stamping my feet on her hand. The deadliest invective I poured at her, naming her slave and poltroon in my malisons. She merely gazed at me without comment, waiting patiently until my fury expended itself and I collapsed into her warm grasp, my chest heaving with sobs, the sharp iron tang of dried blood filling my nostrils. Her gentleness with me seemed all the crueler when juxtaposed against the cold indifference with which she had destroyed Louelle, murdered my people, and broken the siege.

The survivors of her tumult peered timorously from what little sanctuary they had found as she raised her voice to utter a proclamation that reverberated over the smoking ruins. Like thunder her voice rolled inexorably over us, causing many to fall to their knees in reverence. "Hear now my everlasting decree, oh mortal inhabitants of Louelle. This day Merphomenee has graced you with her presence and annexed your nation into her demesne. You shall promptly rebuild this city, greater and grander than before, and you shall flourish under the beneficent rule of your new goddess. In return you shall yearly render the tribute due a goddess without fail. By divine right I appoint Summerlyn Katalina as your new queen, and her daughters shall reign forever after her. Worship me and live."

Limp with listless torpor as I lay in the goddess' hand, I wept for my broken city, my slaughtered family, and my massacred populace. I barely noticed when she lowered her palm and deposited me on a grassy flowerbed spared her ordeal, so trapped I felt by the oppressive misery. Merphomenee stepped away with graceful, elegant strides and vanished through the Goddess' Gate back to Illyrica; I did not see my lovely, fearsome goddess depart our world. As a memento of her rampage she left a single gigantic slipper by the gate that could no longer be closed, still covered in dust and gore - do you remember how she once said that a woman's shoes are her statement? And what an awful proclamation they had been to us! The sun dipped below the horizon and evening gave way reluctantly to night before I finally fell into fitful slumber, gripped in melancholy grief from which I thought I would never recover.

A tenth of Louelle's population perished in that momentous event, forever known afterwards as the Day of Merphomenee, and another quarter may have died of injury and exposure afterwards. The besieging Brabantine army had lost much of its leadership and suffered no less than we, forced to find what shelter remained in Louelle afterwards. My heart aches describing the sorrowful times which followed. I had been spared the aftermath of Phinos; the burden of Louelle she placed directly on my shoulders. Merphomenee sent a vessel to Louelle the very next morning, where she healed a few of the injured and oversaw establishment of her government in Theraveria with me at the head. During the night Uncle Fonteaubleau had attempted to organize the survivors and maintain a semblance of order, but Merphomenee immediately shrank him as she had done to her other victims. Such a message could not be mistaken: my rule alone would she tolerate. Prompted by the goddess' decree, my people came to me for guidance that I felt inadequate to provide. Merrimont, my brother, and my mother had all met their demises; my father yet lived unharmed, but the light in his eyes had been extinguished forever. King Marchand ate little and spoke not at all, wasting away with his sunken gaze always staring hollowly at nothing, and he died of a broken heart in little more than a year's time. The goddess took the body of Platina Titiana away from Theraveria, burying her by the oceanside shrine where she had tended to me. Her daughter survived the destruction unscathed, but Renia Sundalicia herself I never saw again.

I roused myself from my torpid trance to care for my afflicted people only by a supreme effort of will.

News of the atrocity immediately spread from Louelle. Within a month a Brabantine mission arrived to express heartfelt condolences and to offer aid, assistance which I accepted gratefully. The nearby Allemagnian principalities too hastened in proffering consolation. Assistance came from as far away as Anglica and Sylvania, and many a foreign diplomat stared in abject horror when shown through the devastated districts. My suffering people desperately needed food and shelter, and the doleful duty of burying the many corpses occupied us for months. Merphomenee indeed blessed us with gentle rains, bountiful harvests, and peaceful days, none of which lessened the abject fear and awe in which my people ever after held her. Wherever her vessel walked citizens of Louelle reluctantly bowed and curtsied on trembling knees with perspiring brows, and mothers hid their children from her. She never occupied my body again, a small mercy in these trying times. How bitterly I reproached myself for allowing this sorrow to come to pass - had I simply yielded my heart to the goddess at her most vulnerable, could all this have been avoided? Sometimes I fancied I saw the ghosts of the slain wordlessly accusing me.

From the Day of Merphomenee forth I only wore the black dress of mourning. The heralds recorded my long reign as that of Queen Summerlyn Katalina Magna, but you, faithful reader, are more like to colloquially know me as the Despondent Queen. That is how I appear in my regnal portraits: beautiful and stately, but tinged with a melancholy that no mirth could alleviate. The goddess' upright slipper we cleaned and restored by her command, laboriously transporting it to the center of the city as a stark reminder of the fear that now controlled our lives. The people never accepted it as a monument, however, and we instead built a separate shrine to our fallen brothers and sisters. No affection or warmth could possibly exist between myself and the goddess anymore, so I always spoke with her vessel in aloof, formal manner. I never married or took a lover; instead, in my old age I adopted a granddaughter of Renia Sundalicia with Merphomenee's approval to name as heiress-apparent and she became the Crown Princess of Theraveria.

Merphomenee descended without warning on the Brabantine capital a year later, an event by all accounts as destructive as the visit upon Louelle, witnessed by dignitaries from across the world. Any lingering resistance to her rule vanished; cowed into submission by her invincible power, the kings of Europa resigned themselves to her loathsome game of annual tribute. As time passed Louelle recovered in body, indeed rebuilding more beautiful than she had been before. The new palace required twenty years to erect and surpassed the old in every conceivable luxury; if you happen to visit Louelle, please come inside and see for yourself. My people raised new schools and universities, theaters and odeums, banks and museums and galleries, and the tragic play became a staple of the Louelle city culture. The Nouveau Theraverian architecture has been described as haunting by critics, built ever conscious of the possibility that it could be swept away in an instant by a whimsical goddess. Trade flourished as well, not only between the cities of Europa but also from Theraveria to Illyrica. The Goddess' Gate we rebuilt and expanded into a grand market promenade where citizens of both worlds could freely mingle. Thus I received regular letters from Renia and sent many to her, but my collection of her missives is now worn with use and much rereading. In my twilight years I reigned over a city and a nation that exceeded the capital of my youth in beauty and riches, clothed in queenly wealth but scarred in spirit. We seldom danced or sang anymore, our lives occupied by industry and construction rather than amusing social diversions. The refined tastes and manners of the people steadily gave way to baser indulgences. The blow to the Theraverian soul dealt on the Day of Merphomenee never healed.

I tell you this account, reader of mine, weary of life as I am at the end of my days, to help you glimpse the mind of the divine. Once there existed a warm and gentle affection between mortal and goddess, a young princess named Summerlyn Katalina and an ageless muse named Merphomenee who loved each other deeply but could not reconcile their different natures. To be separated from one's love is, I think, the deepest tragedy of all. I longed to be cherished as a woman; she would have mortals worship her freely; both of our fleeting dreams simply proved tragically impossible by the very reality of our unequal existences. She cared for me as much as she could bring herself to do and I adored her by my very own helplessness. To prostrate myself before her power, to grovel at her feet, to know that my life lay in the palm of her hand - how could any mortal devote herself to an omnipotent goddess more perfectly? How could the fullest measures of burnt sacrifice, of ardent prayer, of choral song compare with the manifest transcendence of a woman exposed in her utterly honest powerlessness? That is the truth I learned from her. If you see my beautiful tragic goddess one day, still ageless, still majestic, still lonely, I bid you commend me to her, for I have never ceased to pine for what could have blossomed between us. Therein lies the essence of mortality - it is the only trait that gives human life any meaning at all.

In the end, we all exist to eternally worship Merphomenee.



FIN.