Empire Approaching (Patreon)

[A scene before the events of Viridis] 

Daoth glimmered with morning dew collected upon the grasses spread  across rolling hills. Jennifer stood at the front door, leaning against  the frame, watching her daughter toss rocks down the slope that lead to a  distant forest. Trees bundled together along the riverbed, clustered in  tight bundles to cast looming shadows upon their depths. They would  come for her daughter today. She had turned sixteen.

Jennifer watched as Jade paced the beaten path from their home  towards the distant dirt road. Her husband, Dael, had offered to take  the girl down to the market yesterday. A final trip before she was  stolen by the Empire. But Jade refused. Stubborn and proud, Jade didn’t  want to say goodbye to the food markets, the children she had come to  know, the kids she wrestled with. She wanted to leave with her head held  high. She wanted to be a soldier.

It was partially Jennifer’s fault. She knew Jade would be taken one  day. She knew they would come for her. So the moment her daughter could  hold a blade, Jennifer taught her how to fight. How to spar. How to  survive the onslaught of Reds and bombs and death. Perhaps if she had  given her a normal childhood, Jade would’ve ran at the first chance,  escaped somewhere into the hills, hidden amidst deserters. But no. She  woke up at dawn, got dressed, and stood outside. Her tinted goggles were  pulled over her eyes, a lie told to every official to keep them from  checking their color. A rare mutation, but a known one nevertheless.  Some people were born with eyes that could not handle unfiltered light.  Many of them were Blues. All of them were Blues, now that she thought  about it. It only made sense for Jade to be one, too.

Her daughter was muscular in form. Red hair spilled down her  shoulders and freckles dotted every inch of skin the sun kissed. Jade  was trying her best to look relaxed, but by how she threw rocks, how she  kicked them into the air, how her hands tightened into fists before  loosening–she was anxious.

She was terrified.

Jennifer remembered the first time she saw a body. Her first position  had been a footman here on Daoth, where, years before, the most severe  fighting took place. She was seventeen when she had been recruited.  Nineteen before she joined the Opes proper. And now look at where they  had fallen: Jade would be a full-blooded warrior before the year was up.

It had been late, a midafternoon expedition where Jennifer was placed  in a platoon tasked with taking an old factory building. There were  only a few of them on Daoth, most created to process meat. Due to the  war reaching the green planet, the factory had been taken over by Reds.  Jennifer and her comrades were tasked in clearing them out.

Jennifer hadn’t asked questions. She had been training for a year.  She believed herself strong enough to take what a skirmish would throw  at her. She hadn’t expected starving Thrax troops devouring raw meat,  guzzling blood, trying everything they could just to sustain their  bodies.

They had taken the meat factory, killed civilians, because they  wanted to live. When Jennifer was ordered to kill them, she did. They  were already covered in blood. There was no way of telling what was  theirs and what was the slaughtered animal’s. But when she met the blade  of a thin Thrax warrior, with armor that fit him loosely, when she  plunged her blade into his gut and watched crimson gurgle out of the  wound, she knew the blood on her armor was his. She knew.

She never really felt like she washed that off.

“Jen?” Dael approached her, his steps quiet. His brown eyes were  pale, as they always had been, just enough to cause people to look at  him again, to question his allegiance. He was lucky no one tested him  further than a glance.

“Hello,” she said quietly. “Good morning.”

“Are you just watching her?”

Jennifer sighed. She looked back to Jade once more. “I am.”

“She’ll be okay,” Dael said. “She knows she can’t show her eyes.”

“I know.”

“And you trained her. You taught her everything. She’ll survive.”

“I know.” Jennifer closed her eyes. “But she won’t come back the same.”

“None of us do,” Dael murmured. He offered her a cup. “I made tea.”

With a smile, she took it. “Thank you, Dael.”

He stood by her at the door. The tea was hot, its citrus flavors  paired with the assam of black tea. It burned her tongue to taste and  filled her chest with lava. Jade stopped her pacing and looked down the  path at figures coming from the forest. Shadows escaping the shadowland.

The Empire had come.