Long May Her Reign Continue

“Servitude” was the best way to describe what Deerlegs and Embargo witnessed at the feast, and it turned their stomachs. Oviraptors, predominantly, wandering around the building offering slabs of bark or slate with an assortment of fruits, nuts, and vegetation on them, or something in what they’d heard referred to as a “bowl” or “plate.” Many of the courtiers seemed to look upon them with disdain, or ignored them completely. The oviraptors didn’t take anything for themselves, only offered it to others and bowed their heads when given an order from one of the iguanodons. Others came and went from the building, bringing replacement dishes and taking empty ones to somewhere unknown.

Euoplo guards stood at different positions around the inside of the building as well as at each doorway, very few of them actually joining the others to enjoy the feast. Their presence continued to beg the question - what exactly were they standing guard against? What threats were they here to destroy?

The iguanodons held themselves with an air of authority and regality that neither Deerlegs nor Embargo had ever seen. Highcliff was structured so that no one pachy was held to be more important than the other. In the Alpha lab, everyone was reminded every day that life was precious and fleeting, and that in the end, they were all just food for plants or carnivores. Yet here, it was clear that the iguanodons valued their lives above all, and had raised amongst themselves a Queen. A singular ruler to govern every life of every Atlantean. She was the most important of them all.

This whole thing seemed backwards and wrong to Deerlegs. She shifted on the scraped-together pile of material she and Embargo had been lead to to sit on. Lead to. There had been no indication that they weren’t free to roam with the others, yet still she felt unwelcome and uncomfortable under the watchful eyes of the Court

She had been uncomfortable since Alaric had fetched them from their “jail,” informing them that their presence was required by the court. They had barely had time to sit down, to breathe after their excursion into the tunnel of glowing mosses and mushrooms, before they had been summoned. Alaric had even said that they had been given a full pardon by the Queen, though he hadn’t said why, and neither pachy was sure they fully believed this “pardon.”

Now that they were here, Deerlegs wished that they would have just been left to rot in their too-damp jail. At least there, they had a feasible escape route. She was so close to getting the grate off the vent, then they could make their way out and find their way back to the surface.

A chill crept up her spine, making her feathers stand on end. Her attention was drawn towards a corner of the room before she could even stop to think. The cryos again, the blind one and the one whose voice was not… right. She shook herself, trying to rid herself of the feeling, yet the chill persisted, and worsened when she saw - she could scarcely believe her eyes - an iguanodon bowing to them.

What power did they have within the Court to make one of the courtiers bow before them? And worse yet, it looked like the male whispered something in the iguanodon’s ear.

Deerlegs shook out her feathers again, bidding them to lay flat. They betrayed her emotions on a good day, and today was definitely not that. Embargo grunted next to her. He felt it, saw it, too. Something was not right.

Time felt as though it passed excruciatingly slowly from that moment onwards, yet also seemed to blur together. They were two small pachys in an unknown building full of giants - strangers, carnivores, herbivores that paid them no mind. They were alone here. Not for the first time, Deerlegs wished that she’d never decided to lead Embargo here.

The unnerving cryo pair were joined by an acro, which was perhaps even more concerning than them approaching an iguanodon directly. High ranking courtiers moved around the space at their own leisurely pace, chatting and dining. Music - the sound of drums accompanied by lyrical voices who sang songs unknown to the pachys - drifted through the building with the scents of strange food and drink. Other islanders joined in the mingling, looking either just as at ease as the courtiers or just as roughed up and nervous as the Highcliff pachys.  Deerlegs even spied Alaric speaking to a colossal pale and blinded acro, looking just as bored as he did when he had come to fetch them.

They’d all been invited to the banquet, though the purpose remained… unclear. It wasn’t just to thank the pachys for their hard work in repaying their imagined “crime” to the Court, and it wasn’t in celebration of the coming together of the Atlanteans and the islanders. The Atlanteans had made their thoughts about the islanders abundantly clear, and they were simply tolerating their presence at the feast.

It all looked very casual on the surface, but there was a current of tension underneath. Embargo felt it more than Deerlegs, surprisingly from the courtiers even more than the islanders. It was the kind of tension he’d lived with his whole life in the Alpha lab. It was like a pipe with a blockage. The pressure would keep building and building, the pipe groaning and weakening, until eventually, it would blow. Shrapnel would shred anyone close enough to the explosion. The only question then was what would be the tipping point - what would cause this whole place to blow?

He murmured as much to Deerlegs. His fever had started to break, and he could walk a little more steadily now, but making an escape… might be difficult, if tensions reached critical levels.

Deerlegs almost didn’t notice when the drumming stopped. The din of idle conversation and a mixture of relaxed and uncertain laughter was more than enough to fill the void left by the absence of the rhythmic beats. It was when they kicked up again, faster and more intense, that Deerlegs and Embargo raised their heads.

Bugles from a few of the iguanodons echoed in the hall, an announcement that could be heard across the heart of Atlantis. A quiet spread across the banquet building as islanders looked on in apprehension and curiosity, and the Atlanteans watched with excitement and anticipation.

Again a pair of iguanodons bugled, their voices carrying across the still air, and the courtiers grew even more excited. Their saviour was coming. The one who will lead them to their bright and glorious future. Their Queen.

Deerlegs’s crests flattened on either side of her dome and she pressed up against Embargo. Both waited, both watched.

Both listened as a voice spoke up: “Announcing the arrival of the Lady of the Sunken City, Her Majesty Queen Rhys of the Noble Lineage of Perse.”

“Bow to your Queen.” It went unspoken, but all Atlanteans present rose to their feet and bowed steeply, their muzzles almost touching the ground. A few of the islanders followed suit, unsure but not wanting to appear rude. Embargo stayed seated due to fatigue - Deerlegs stayed put out of spite.

The Atlanteans cheered when Queen Rhys made her appearance, amplified and emphasised by the pounding of the drums. Exclamations of her excellence and might rang out, joined by titles that sounded like praise and to Deerlegs, like a threat. “She Who Will Ascend Us” sounded… ominous.

Deerlegs wasn’t sure what she expected from the Atlantean Queen, but the iguanodon who stepped into view looked… no more or less like any of the other Atlanteans. White, with splashes and flecks of deep blue across her body. She carried herself with fearsome grace, adorned with armour on her right shoulder and wrist which gave her additional weaponry. The sight of it made Deerlegs as uneasy as the euoplo warriors posted at every entrance - every exit - did.

The company that entered the hall with her was even more strange. Primates of various sizes and shapes which neither Deerlegs nor Embargo had ever seen or heard of. The smaller of them clung to Rhys’s frame as she strode in with confidence. The largest of them were smaller than an oviraptor (until they stood up on their hind legs, then they could easily look a pachy in the eyes) and were packed with muscle. All of them were covered in shaggy or wiry fur, except on their hands, feet, and faces. They were alien.

Rhys waited in regal silence for the excitement of her arrival to die down while one of the small creatures on her back picked through and groomed the feathers on her shoulders. She didn’t speak until silence once again settled across all those who stood before her.

“Thank you all for your attendance, newcomers to our kingdom and Atlanteans alike. I will speak to you only briefly, for we only have a brief period of time left in our home.”

Sounds of confusion and apprehension rippled across the islanders, but they didn’t have long to speculate.

“I’m afraid it is as dire as my words suggest. Our home, the great Court of Atlantis, is on the verge of ruin. Atlantis was struck by a great cataclysm which shook our very foundations. We have been doing everything we can to recover since that moment, yet our efforts have been in vain, for cracks have continued to creep up and crawl across our walls, leaching saltwater into our soils and poisoning the land which we depend on. No life grows on salted earth.

“Our search for alternatives lead our bravest and most nimble of scouts to the surface - the islands, which many of you call home already. This is not a space we’re familiar with, and it was my specific request that they begin planting seeds from the jungle here on the surface. Plants we are familiar with, which we know how to use as medicine and as food, which will help us adapt to the change that we know is rapidly approaching and can be used to help you in the future. Atlantis always provides for her people.

“It is my sincerest hope that you, those who have willingly walked into our homes and seen the condition of our kingdom, hear my words and give us aid. We cannot stay here for much longer.” The Queen looked mournful, her voice plaintive, as she looked out across the audience.

More than a few islanders were sharing looks with one another, looking shocked by this revelation and sympathetic to the Atlantean’s plight. Good. If she could gather enough help, if enough of the topsiders joined with them and accepted her as their Queen, it would mean that the kingdom would stand. They would have a place of security beneath the ocean as well as land claimed on the islands, rather than being left stranded and exposed in an unknown and potentially hostile new environment. They could expand her kingdom.

“... I know that we cannot expect all of you to give aid. You have your homes to return to, family loved ones who are worried for how long you are gone. For trying to make your homes more hospitable to us, you may even want to see us sink beneath the ocean and forget that we ever existed.”

Embargo shifted slightly beside Deerlegs. Was that a note of malice in her voice, or was he imagining aggression where there was none?

“But those of you that would stay, it is my belief that with enough help, and with your ingenuity and the skills that you can bring to Atlantis, we may yet be able to repair our home. Those of you that would help us, it would be my honour to name you Knights of Atlantis.

“If you have had your fill, if you have enjoyed enough of the feast and festivities, some of my court will guide you to the ceremony site. Those of you who do not wish to help us may stay here and continue enjoying Atlantis’s bounty for as long as you would like before you return to the surface - this banquet is for you.”

Then the Queen, much to the surprise of islanders and Atlanteans alike, bowed, as deeply as the Atlanteans had for her when she arrived to the banquet. After a few moments, the Atlanteans followed her lead, bowing to the islanders. It was only after Rhys rose again that the other Atlanteans straightened up as well, faithfully following her example.

Rhys stepped into the crowd, joining those gathered in their enjoyment of the feast and signalling the end of her speech. Music once again filled the banquet hall, and uncertain conversations slowly began to rise once again.

Some islanders made for the exits immediately, sympathetic hearts for the tragedy that the Atlanteans were suffering from. To lose their home, and in such a terrifying way as to be swallowed by the sea, was a horrific fate. This wasn’t so different from the great Door opening and revealing the entire contained population of the Alpha lab, and the islanders had all been eager to help the lab-bound dinosaurs then. They’d do what they could, as soon as they could, to help repair the dome and ensure the safety of the future of Atlantis.

Many of the remaining islanders… didn’t seem to know what to do about the information they were presented with. This wasn’t the place to have a private conversation to discuss what they were going to do next, not with Atlantean eyes and ears everywhere.

Deerlegs knew exactly what she was going to do, and it was not to “give aid” to the Atlanteans. Ever since they’d arrived in the underwater jungle they had been imprisoned, worked relentlessly, attacked, and abused, as had many others, and now the Queen decided that she wanted their help? No. Deerlegs was exhausted, and Embargo injured. She was more than content to eat her fill while she could, then help Embargo back to the safety of Highcliff - since they’d been pardoned. What a ridiculous notion.

Embargo knew what it was like to live imprisoned, to not have a choice of where you were hatched and where you died. He knew the relief of finding out that there was more to the world than a small, cramped space full of disease and decay, surrounded by sharp teeth and air that poisoned them slowly.

Atlantis was not that. They had plentiful food here, enough for Atlanteans and islanders alike to feast upon. There were no carnivores here threatening to prey upon them, and the Atlanteans seemed to know how to deal with the dangers of the jungle - which they were bringing to the surface. Embargo was sympathetic to the Atlanteans, but only slightly. If the Queen truly wanted their help, she wouldn’t have had her “scouts” hide the location of the tunnel for so long. She would’ve sought the islander’s help sooner.

They had given the Atlanteans no reason to treat them as they had. He was still feeling the effects of his injuries, and he agreed with Deerlegs: when they had gathered their strength, it would be time for them to leave.

He rested while she ate, and picked occasionally at what fruit and vegetation she brought to him. More islanders filtered out of the banquet hall, the decision to help the Atlanteans try to mend their home leading them to seek out courtiers to find this “ceremony site” that Rhys had spoken of.

Those that remained were islanders who had been given the Queen’s grace to enjoy the banquet before they left, those who hadn’t yet decided how they were going to respond to her request, and courtiers whose laughter and jokes filled the air, mixing and mingling with the symphony of drums and voices.

It was then that the Queen gathered their attention again. “My loyal Atlanteans, welcome guests of the Court.”

Begrudgingly, Deerlegs turned her attention from checking Embargo’s injuries up to the Queen. She’d been debating where they’d be sleeping for the night, if not in their “jail.” She’d almost thank Rhys for making this quick.

The remaining crowd, barely lessened by the number of islanders that had left, quieted again to allow the Queen to continue to speak.

“I have enjoyed speaking with many of you, and getting to know you. It saddens me deeply to see so many of you choose to remain,” she murmured, then raised her voice, “yet I understand. We are unknown to you. We are not your family. Perhaps you even feel wronged by our presence and our actions as we try to save ourselves from a grisly fate.”

Deerlegs almost rolled her eyes, the combination of the efforts of the day, the late hour, and the comfortable fullness the feast provided lowering her inhibitions. Embargo was dozing against her, having subconsciously tucked his muzzle into her feathers some time ago.

She glanced up, almost lazily, at the sound of metal quietly creaking from across the hall, near the door. The blind cryo was moving. She looked… almost concerned, but her partner even more so. He almost seemed overwhelmed. Deerlegs straightened up slightly. What had him so troubled? The banquet hall was almost silent, and emptier now than it had been. His blind partner was even leaving the hall without him - maybe that’s what caused the trouble, though it seemed he was making no effort to stop her from going.

Rhys paused, her pale gaze sweeping across those gathered before her. The lazy, content gazes of the islanders who looked upon her with pity or disdain- not enough pity to act on and help them, just enough impudence to stand in their way. The hopeful, pleading faces of her beloved Court. She would do right by her kingdom. She would lead them all to safety, to victory.

“I must leave you soon to anoint your kin, those of you who deigned to bow your heads in service of your Queen, as Knights of Atlantis. Before I go, though, I leave you with a final message, and my courtiers with a final order.”

Music began to play again. The beating of drums. Different from before, with no voices to accompany it this time. Embargo stirred against Deerlegs when she shifted, making to get up. The feeling of wrongness had returned suddenly and violently. It worsened when she heard the doors quietly shut, and saw armed and armoured courtiers barring the path. Even the Queen’s primates and lemurs had spread out across the hall, walking amongst them and clinging to the walls and windows.

There was no kindness or benevolence in the Queen’s eyes as she looked upon the gathered onlookers. Only ambition.

“Those of you who have stayed here do not stand with Atlantis. You are against us, and I will not allow you to bar our way.”

There was just enough time for the remaining islanders to start to voice their confusion and concern before chaos erupted in the banquet hall. A shriek, shrill and agonised, ripped through the air as the first iguanodon fatally pierced an islander with the massive spike that protruded from their wrist. It was just the first voice in a chorus of disorder, a melody tangled with fear and pain as the courtiers descended upon the unwitting islanders who had chosen to ignore their Queen’s plea for help. It would be a slaughter.

Deerlegs screamed for Embargo to run, pushed him and hurried him to his feet. They had to run before they were killed.

A euoplo’s hammer crashed to the ground in front of them, aimed for another but bringing the reality of the confrontation to their faces nonetheless. It shattered the tiles, sending shrapnel through the air. Deerlegs bleated in alarm and Embargo scrambled away - if they had been standing just an inch closer to the door, that blow would have killed them.

Deerlegs nipped at his shoulder to pull him away. Bellows, crashes, screeches, and roars joined the gruesome sounds of punctured flesh and shattered bone. Voices were silenced, lives snuffed out in an instant. The scent of blood, the stench, was thick in the air and made the dirty tile floor slick as they tried to escape. There would be no quiet vanishing through the vent in the jail, no peaceful exit as they quietly left through the same tunnel through which they arrived.

Embargo slipped and just managed to catch his footing before he tripped and crashed over the body of an islander. He looked in horror into the dead, blank eyes of the ghostly star-spotted cryo that had helped them before, body broken and mangled and jaws agape, capturing his last hopeless moment when he had tried to warn the islanders to flee.

Deerlegs turned, trying to skid to a stop with bloody slaughter surrounding them. Momentum carried her forwards and she crashed into the body of an iguanodon, a velvet black male with bright flashes of vibrant lavender across his throat and face.

Killing something so small would bring little glory, but he would do it, for the honour of his Queen. Deerlegs scrambled to try to get away at the same time that Cobbler swung at her. The tip of his spike just caught her hip. A screech of pain was ripped from her throat at the same time that the spike easily slipped past her feathers and tore through the hide beneath.

She landed roughly, stumbling and struggling to catch her feet, only to stumble further when she tried to put too much weight to one side and pain radiated from the wound. Blood stained her feathers into an ugly dark red-brown, matted them together to clearly display where the iguanodon had wounded her.

Enraged and terrified, Deerlegs snorted and tossed her head and charged at the iguanodon with all the fury and wrath of a frenzied creature backed into a corner. She was only dimly aware of Embargo shouting to warn her against attacking the iguanodon, his voice barely audible over the cacophony in the hall and the blood pounding in her ears. This wasn’t her first fight. She had sparred with Highcliff pachys since she’d been born, trained to fight and flee from the island’s worst carnivores. Even the pain of the injury was fading as she charged, faded out by the adrenaline that rushed through her veins.

Cobbler swung at her again as she charged, but Deerlegs changed direction at the last minute. It might have worked, if Cobbler hadn’t also been trained for combat. Too late, Deerlegs remembered Raya’s words. “You’re as fast as the scouts.” Not faster. Not more agile. She was just like the oviraptors that the iguanodon would have grown up with, just stronger. Bulkier.

An easier target.

Cobbler’s first swing cut through the air - his second, with his opposite wrist, ripped through her tail. Feathers and flesh parted, ripped open, with the bone spur that was almost as long and thick as a pachy’s forearm. There was no sound that came from Deerleg’s parted jaws, the pain too excruciating to manifest as anything other than wordless agony.

She landed, stumbled, and fell, collapsed in a heap on the ground. Cobbler snorted - the topsiders really were pathetic little things, the very notion that they would at all be useful or be able to stand in their way a fantasy - yet he would carry out the orders of his Queen. Those that remained in the banquet hall would be eradicated.

He raised a forelimb to crush her bony head into the bloody tile, only to bellow in pain himself when Embargo crashed into one of his hind legs. There hadn’t been time to stop Deerlegs from rushing into danger, but there was time to stop Cobbler from turning her into paste. The iguanodon staggered and fell against another courtier fighting near them, unable to support his own weight when the gravity of his own injury - his leg or ankle likely fractured by the impact - crippled his balance.

Embargo hurried to Deerlegs, where the hen was trying desperately to get to her feet. Blood wept from the wound, flashes of exposed and torn muscle visible behind the bloodsoaked feathers.

She yelled in disoriented fury when Embargo touched her flank, eyes wide and wild with panic and the desperation of someone who had just seen a glimpse of their own death. She only relaxed marginally when she realised it was just the dark male with a hundred suns on his hide and not a courtier having come to finish her off.

Blood dripped from her feathers, lost in the sea of red that painted the banquet hall’s floor as they limped frantically out of the fray.

With the massacre fully underway, it was easier for the small pachys to go unnoticed. The courtiers were preoccupied with fighting and trying to destroy the larger, more obvious islanders that remained to contest the expansion and ascension of their kingdom.

What had once been beautifully prepared food had been mashed into unidentifiable muck. Blankets, pillows, and scraps of fabric that had been used as seating had been shredded and soaked with blood, dyed together into one morbid colour. Screams of pain, shouts of rage, and cries of anguish filled the hall, just drowned out by the drums which continued to beat. From a distance, it would only sound like the merriment of the feast had continued, and in fact grown impossibly more merry now that so many had chosen to join Atlantis in their efforts to mend what had been broken.

The scene at the main entrance was graphic - mangled bodies of those who had blindly attempted to escape the violent ambitions of the Atlantean Queen lay before a pair of armoured euoplocephalus, who had been ordered to stop all those who attempted to escape by any means necessary.

Instead, Embargo ran and smashed through a window, shards of glass splintering and cutting into the skin on his dome. Jagged pieces cut into his feet as he seized Deerlegs’s scruff in his mouth and heaved her over the side when she couldn’t make the jump up, herself.

Deerlegs protested only briefly. She was lightheaded, her heart pounding. Every beat left a few more spatters of blood on the ground in a morbid trail for anyone to follow if they saw fit.

For now, at least, the Atlanteans were preoccupied with the bloodbath. The screams grew quieter, but only because the pachys were getting further from the banquet hall.

Embargo didn’t know where they were going. He hardly knew what direction they’d come from in the first place, had been so ill that he hadn’t been able to memorise the layout of the Court, and now it was long into the night and too dark to see any proper detail beyond where the path split.

He headed for the nearest dark building, all but dragging Deerlegs with him. Her wounds desperately needed to be tended to.