The Usurper - Secrets Of The Hidden Library Fiction Competition

. Melyth lay unfeeling as her slaves pierced her thin, papery flesh with syringes of foul concoctions in her desperate attempts to regain sensation. The torture halls had long since failed to have any effect upon her, and she had built up a dreadful tolerance to the refined drugs she had once used. Nothing made her feel alive any more, all she could feel was her soul slowly dying. The aged Archon had withered away to a husk of her former self. No longer did her beauty radiate from every inch of bright skin as it had in her youth. No longer did her powerful voice echo against the marble walls as she gave commands to her underlings. In recent times, when messengers came to seek audience with the leader of the Severed Wings kabal, they knelt before little more than a skeleton draped over an ornate chaise longue.

 Just outside of the great double-doors, Melyth’s sole daughter ordered her personal bodyguards to remain outside of the hall, and to shoot without question anyone who attempted to gain entry. She strode through the doors, making her way to kneel by her mother’s bedside. The Archon’s milky eyes flew open in confusion as Synn banished the slaves from the room. Their equipment lay strewn across tables in their haste to flee from their mistress’s daughter.

 “Synn, why are you here?” Rasped the shade that had once been a powerful woman, “Why do you not attend to my business? I am so close, so close to feeling again.” She grasped her daughter’s hand, bony fingers holding tighter than they ought to have been able to. “I will return soon," she whispered urgently, "I just need to remember the emotions I have lost.”

 The younger female threw the claw-like hands down to the bed, drawing herself up to her full height. The contrast between the two was fierce.

 “Just look at yourself, mother. You languish here in this cold hall, dumb to the world in some drug-induced stupor; you feel nothing, you do nothing. You waste away and the kabal wastes with you.” Synn opened her arms wide, displaying her vital, youthful form. “And now look at me.” She dominated the room, her voice reverberating against the walls. “I am the future. I am the strength that your people crave. I am everything that you are not. And that is why you are going to die.”

 “You would kill me?”

 “Of course, dearest mother,” Synn whispered, “With your own blade.”

 The poisoned dagger bit deep into the Archon’s neck. As the blood ebbed from her new wound, she finally felt what she had been trying to feel for so long: so many emotions, and foremost amongst them was pride. For who could not be proud of such a maliciously powerful creature; a child so malevolent as to bide its time and then steal an entire kabal from its parent like plucking a ripe fruit from a tree?

Thats very good, she bided her time just right, and the old archon was well on the way to beccoming a parched one...mercy, if anything possible in the Dark City

Well I'm sure there was some loyalty there once. Mercy would seem appropriate, no?

Ah yes, the dark city is a tough place, slay or be slain. Also, I love the amount of detail in your description of the older woman, really strengthens the image of a sickly creature rotting away.

Thank you, Anterzhul! I tried to focus on the contrast between mother and daughter.

I loved the use of this theme word, because the story fooled me. I was convinced the daughter’s pride was going to go down, and then pride became ‘a mother’s pride’ in a clever twist from the expected. Good stuff!

Thank you, Thor. I'll admit I originally planned it to be about the daughter's pride but the twist came to me halfway through writing.