#the lady in gray

[emptymanuscript]

Day 2 of lila's 12 days of writers self love, Crown, from one of the future stories in Knights of Day that should eventually get a book. There is a bit of gore and death (and possibly spoilers) in this one, so I'll put it under a cut.

The stentor started the sixth charge on the scroll of skin, "The summoning of the august dead to-"

The giant demon face carved into the door spoke, the opening of it's mouth flashing the heavy gray twilight outside, cutting off the crime, "The Lady in Gray."

Around the throne room, each of the suits of armor raised their polearm and slammed the butt against the marble floor five times.

The demon face split, the great doors swinging wide to the world beyond and a single figure dressed all in gray. Her mask, some kind of pelvic bone, the top was carved in a glory of triangles, like the top of the Statue of Liberty. The lower part, carved in a semblance of a maze with the paths crossing over and under and swirling in an impossible to solve path covered all signs of her face.

James and Zephyr both gaped, Zephyr's jaw hanging lower and lower as the woman floated to the center of the throne room floor.

She dropped to the floor into the lotus position. She bent her arms before touching fist to fist before raising two more arms from her gray dress, bending one low to the ground and twisting it into the hand sign for 'fear not.' The second hand rose high and with a tiny jerk, a collapsible staff snapped from her fist, the bottom just whispering against the ground in the silence.

Her voice itched in James' ears, familiar, annoyingly familiar, as if he had heard it before, in this life, not one of those clinging memories from Bonelfoermos or his other lives. "Emperor Ogedai, your Empire grows. The Swarm grows. Five hundred thousand."

The Emperor rose from his throne and bowed low to her, trying in his posture to diminish the height of the dias that set him above her. "You honor us with your august presence, great Lady. I have only done as you bade me long ago and brought the world to heel for-"

"I do not need reminding," she said in a monotone. As if it all meant nothing and she was just reading a well trodden script. "I remember every word I have ever spoken to you and every word you spoke in return."

"Do you? I wonder sometimes. With that mask it is sometimes hard to tell."

"Perhaps a demonstration, then."

Zephyr leaned close, up on tiptoe to mutter to James, "Does her voice sound familiar to you?"

Zephyr jerked so hard James had to grab his arm to prevent him tipping over when the Lady in Grey struck her staff twice against the marble flooring. Around the room every suit of armor echoed her strikes.

The giant demon face spoke again, "The Lady in Red."

The face split, the door opening to reveal a tall, skeletal woman, draped in a soaked robe the color of fresh blood.

James gripped Zephyr's arm tighter. "What the fuck is going on?"

The Lady in red stalked into the throne room like a horror movie monster, a predator on the prowl, gore streaking behind her, drawing a carpet of blood and minced gristle.

JJ whispered, "Fuck me if I know, but God just showed up to our trial."

The Lady in Red snapped her head toward JJ, who clapped her hands over her own mouth to shut herself up. The Lady in Red's mask was a stretch of fresh wood, the bark still on it, bound tight in thorny vines piercing through her ruby black hair. Where eyes should be in the face were flint spear tips. Instead of a mouth the broken bottom of a saber tooth's skull reared its fangs over the bottom tusk's of a boar's jaw.

James shivered and glanced away as if the spear tips were looking at him and he just couldn't take it.

The mask slowly turned back on the Emperor as she stalked to exactly five paces behind the Lady in Gray.

The hand the Lady in Gray held in the symbol for 'Fear not' raised, and she pointed with two calloused fingers at the Fae ambassador. "Our words are not for the ears of the dreaming world. Let only the sleepless hear."

There was one pregnant heartbeat of silence, the ambassador's thin face, stretching wide in terror, then a primordial scream, a whoop of feral destruction, every monster in the dark shrieking that its prey was at hand as the Lady in Red leaped over the Lady in Gray's head, pouncing in one giant motion toward the dias. She whipped up her arms like claws, blood and ravaged meat splattering across the throne room.

James clapped his free hand to his face as the hot spray struck him, stealing away his breath as the memory of other moments of gore and rage flashed across his mind. His other hand gripped even tighter on Zephyr, hauling him close as Zephyr's legs gave out, his whole body shaking as he whimpered.

The Lady in Red fell on the ambassador before he had made the full turn to run, her hands striking into the Fae's side in a brittle snapping of bones. There was a wet rush as her clinging bare feet drove him to the ground and one hand ripped his heart free from the far side of his chest. She howled hungrily, holding the heart high. Two more arms struck from the bloody robe, grabbing his face and skull and ripping his head sideways with a crack.

She turned her bloodied mask on the Emperor.

Every guard in the room stepped back, away from the threat.

The Lady in Gray, again in serene monotone, said, "I trust this satisfies as my credentials."

The Emperor went to his knees, bowing forward so his forehead touched the marble step below his dias, his black robes spreading like a stain. "What is it you wish, terrible and august brides of death?"

[emptymanuscript]

And I see The Lady in Gray and Bonelfoermos at the very end of things. Their last moment together when he asks her who she is, already sure of the answer. 

In the zero draft it was one of those moments that hit me right in the feels, having set it up for ages, most of the zero draft actually, dropping clues and hints. Since I decided on her identity almost immediately after I changed the mythology to its current incarnation. And Bonelfoermos finally asks and she says yes. And it was just the perfect culmination moment of his whole journey.

It was really one of those moments that hit the right note of what I was trying to do, of having the personal and the mythological overlap. I am that. 

I am Bonelfoermos. I am Mighty. I am that. And because of I've acted that way, because I have striven, because I have succeeded, that I am. Which is what, at the very end I would love for my readers to walk away with: they are the Mighty. If they choose to be. 

Yintion J