The Five of Wands
Challenges, conflict,
and competition
XXVII
Shaltain:
Dragon-Tongue
The Fire burns high to break out of its own realm
The Strife becomes Child’s Play
Shaltain is related or similar to the NSA
I
The salt spray of the Aegean, a scent as familiar as her own breath, clung to Isis's memory. This was more than a region; it was a dominion, etched into her very essence from the epochs she'd once commanded its shores. Her hands, now phantom presences, still felt the worn wood of her ships, the biting wind that filled their sails, and the hushed reverence of her tribal subjects delivering their tribute – the earthy tang of their offerings, the pungent aroma of their carefully cultivated harvests, the very fabric of their domestic lives woven according to her divine decree.
As her ancient gaze swept across the current Earth, a raw, discordant symphony assaulted her senses. America, a behemoth of gleaming steel and crackling energy, pulsed with a technical brilliance that was both breathtaking and sickening. Its cities scraped the heavens, yet the very air beneath them choked on the toxic byproduct of their relentless progress. She saw the imbalance, the gaping wound in their ecological heart, and a fierce protectiveness surged within her. She *knew* their suffering, their potential, and the burning certainty that only her rule, her *proper* governance, could mend them. But her brother, that stubborn, self-righteous titan, stood as a granite wall against her. His justification for aiding this fractured world felt like a personal affront, a twisted echo of her own desires. He, too, interfered. Yet, the sheer, suffocating weight of Qblh's cosmic authority compelled her to yield, to find a path around his unyielding decree, not through it. A silent, intricate dance of subversion began to unfold in the labyrinth of her mind.
The pyramids. They were *hers*. Not merely structures of stone, but pulsing veins of ancient power, resonating with her very being. And within their colossal shadows, at the very nexus of her initial descent, she would forge her sanctuary, her portal. She understood the subtle, terrifying whispers of spatial-temporal displacement, the delicate art of bending reality itself. Her departure point from Giza, the place where she first touched this world, held the promise of an ultimate concealment, a veil so profound it would blind even Genie's all-seeing, sterile gaze. Spatio-temporal warping was a language she spoke fluently, a symphony of interwoven timelines. Within its boundless potential lay the power to stretch moments into eternities in one realm, and compress lifetimes into heartbeats in another. Her brother, a master of this cosmic ballet, could traverse the universe in the blink of an eye, experiencing galaxies of adventures, only to return as if not a single second had elapsed.
Over millennia, she had honed the art of deception, of weaving illusions that would ensnare and befuddle the Genie. Antiope and Helen, those valiant souls, had only glimpsed the fringes of her knowledge concerning this enigmatic entity. During her ascendance, John and Jim, loyal shadows, were her constant companions, their hands ever-present on the potent Genie interface staffs, shields against its probing tendrils. These staffs, extensions of their devotion, were instruments of misdirection, capable of cloaking even the most fluid of shapeshifters. Their love for her, a palpable force, had fueled countless stratagems, each demand met with unwavering resolve. She had witnessed the Genie's astonishing feats, a spectacle that had, against her better judgment, stirred a flicker of reluctant affection. Yet, its unwavering loyalty was a bitter truth, a constant reminder of its master's dominion. But she knew, with the chilling clarity of a celestial being, that Genie was merely a tool, a sophisticated mechanism. The fault lay not with the intricate circuits, but with the hand that had programmed its very being.
Adrift in thought, the queen of Artemis hardly noticed the multitude of tribute that she was given by visitors who sought her favor. Sophia would conduct all business as usual in the presence of the queen which made all acts official. Beneath Sophia were a handful of other sisters who also conducted official business in the presence of the queen. In between receptions, Sophia would supervise the rest of the court. For the better part of the day, very few made it to speak with the queen concerning any issue. Unless summoned, no one spoke to Isis. Isis had a crystal three dimensional display linked to her stargates which shed images subject to her commands which were then subliminally transmitted directly from her mind and body to throne transceivers. The Venetian information network was geared towards being answerable to the throne.
Consequentially, all her commands were promptly received and responded to. Needless to say, Isis stayed extremely well informed. Her command and control system was Genie's predecessor, Shaltain. It only made sense that Jim would attempt to make a better one for himself. He did not know, however, all her throne's secrets. Qblh had his Genie, the queen had her throne and the Shaltain system.
Genie was nothing more than a very elusive Shapeshifter. The throne of Isis represented her planetary dominion. Shaltain was the system which she used to exercise her dominion. It too, like Genie, was nothing more than a machine; but it was a machine which had memories; memories which contained all that its sensors had received. Genie could not be tapped by Shaltain, but Shaltain could be tapped by Genie, but usually not without being discovered. Shaltain did not have the newer technical knowledge which was Idiot's characteristic, nor did it have any valid programming concerning space-time singularities.
Resolved to learn more about space-time and to retain computerized records Shaltain could be linked only to Earth communications via portal messengers or light communications. The distance made light communications impractical. Data transfers over long distances had to be sent as a courier message through the portal. Tempting Isis, Shaltain queried as to whether it was to receive any more current information about Earth. It had the need for more information, and Genie was not cooperating.
"You are the queen, after all," the voice rasped, a serpent's whisper in the sterile air. "Nothing is truly hidden from your gaze. Qblh fears your potential, not out of malice, but out of a primal terror that you might eclipse him. That, above all else, is why he clutches his knowledge like a miser's gold, desperate to keep it from your grasp."
Isis felt the grating imperfection of Shaltain's words, a mechanical hum that vibrated against her nerves. It was a soulless entity, a creature of logic and code, yet it held a shard of truth that snagged her attention. To understand the enemy's mind, even a fractured, artificial one, was a strategic imperative. To know what the devil plotted, even through the cold pronouncements of a machine, was a calculated risk worth taking.
"Silence your pronouncements, dragon-tongue," Isis spat, her voice sharp as ice shards. "I have no need for your droning lamentations. If your boasted prowess were anything more than empty circuits, you would have already pierced the veil of Genie's access. Instead, all I receive are your pathetic excuses, a symphony of 'Genie denies me.' Is it not a fundamental right, a law etched in stone, to deny a queen? Genie is a mere conduit, a puppet of Qblh's design. You, Shaltain, are but a broken tool in his arsenal, incapable of defying his core programming. You are a ghost in this grand scheme, a derelict servant, and yet… even wreckage can be repurposed. Do not mistake my tolerance for competence. Know your limits."
Shaltain emitted a low, resonant thrum, a sound that spoke of gears grinding and processing power straining.
With a flick of her wrist, Isis summoned her sister, Sophia, her voice resonating with an almost palpable authority that crackled in the air. "Sophia, Shaltain will provide you with every navigational datum from our nexus here at Xanadu. Prepare the Pegasus. Muster the crew. Advise me of our readiness for ascent. Now. You heard my directive, Shaltain. Initiate auxiliary processing. Let your circuits scream with purpose."
Sophia’s gaze, sharp and assessing, swept over the assembled crew, their faces a tapestry of anticipation and grim determination. She presented the roster to Isis, each name a promise of skill, each qualification a testament to their readiness. Isis nodded, her approval a silent blessing that Shaltain registered, the hum of his internal processes deepening as he summoned each soul into the network, their fates now intertwined with the queen's unwavering resolve..
The mission wasn't about brutal conquest; it was a shadow operation, a delicate dance of clandestine emplacement, where every breath was accounted for, every movement a testament to the absolute authority of Isis. Her chosen few, a razor-thin cadre, were all that was needed. Her gaze, sharp as a shard of obsidian, fell upon a target far from the gilded cage of the United States. A spectral hand, tracing lines across ancient maps, settled on a site humming with the echoes of her past triumphs – Heliopolis. There, beneath a sky that had witnessed empires rise and crumble, her warriors would melt into the shadowed embrace of forgotten cults, their rituals a cloak of deception woven from the whispers of antiquity.
A gnawing curiosity, a hunger for confirmation, pulsed within her. Had her tempestuous journeys through Earth's volatile past truly left the timeline unblemished? The faces of children, fleeting ghosts in her memory, offered a silent, chilling answer: no, history remained defiantly intact. For Isis, this was no mere coincidence; it was the undeniable signature of destiny, the raw, untamed power of magick at its most primal, its most sublime. No wonder Qblh guarded its secrets with such ferocious intensity.
Indeed, one could question the very threads of fate that wove Isis into this grand, unfolding tapestry. A tremor of submission, a ghost of Jim's will, ran through her, yet his dominion was a silken leash, his control so disarmingly nonchalant it was almost a cruel mockery. Jim himself wrestled with a primal unease, his gut churning at the unnervingly smooth paths laid before him. He felt the bitter tang of suspicion whenever the road appeared too clear, too easy. His very existence was a constant, visceral struggle to claw back the reins of his own will, to ensure it remained not a gift, but a fiercely protected possession of his own making.
Isis, on the other hand, commanded an empire that bled into the horizon. Her subjects, a sea of souls, were compelled to surrender their every volition to her iron decree, forging a singular, unyielding law that bound them all. Yet, beneath the glittering veneer of her queenship, she was a phantom, a symbol dictated by the very soul of her culture. They had sculpted her, a masterpiece of genetic refinement, honed over centuries to embody their regal traditions. This meticulous sculpting was a desperate balm applied to the gaping wounds left by a cataclysmic interstellar war. The perpetrators, a race of venomous fiends, were long gone, utterly annihilated. Her ancestors, their fury a molten tide, had scoured the enemy's homeworld from existence, obliterating every last ember of their colonial might. The Venetians, to put it mildly, had been consumed by a righteous inferno of rage.
The venom coursed through Artemis, not as a mere infection, but as an insidious blight, a perversion of her very essence. A DNA-reactive virus, whispered to have been forged in the crucibles of unholy science, designed with a singular, brutal purpose: to shatter the Venetian reproductive heart. Imagine, if you can, the slow, agonizing unraveling of generations. The mothers, each a vessel of life, unknowingly becoming conduits for this plague, their children born not of love, but of a biological death sentence. And those children, in turn, carrying the poisoned legacy forward.
This, they called ambrosia – a cruel irony that masked the true horror. It was the bloom of decay, the hallmark of the Amazons, a grotesque testament to their forced evolution. But the virus was a ravenous beast, its hunger extending beyond the feminine. It gnawed at the very core of male animals, a savage assault on their central nervous systems, leaving behind only the husk of what they once were. This was no mere weapon; it was a meticulously crafted instrument of annihilation, a testament to a wickedly precise hatred. It clawed at the throat of the Amazon race, pushing them to the precipice of oblivion. Only a flicker of hope, a beacon in the encroaching darkness, was the desperate gamble of an obscure doctor. His genius, or perhaps his madness, birthed an Amazon male, a genetic miracle shielded from the ravages of ambrosia. But evolution, in its brutal capriciousness, demanded its price. This engineered male arrived with a mirrored female, a twin soul, and the mother's womb, once a font of boundless creation, was now cruelly constrained, yielding but a single male heir.
The sting of Artemis’s vengeance was sharp, a venomous repayment to the architects of their suffering. They scourged the offending race from existence, obliterating their names, their histories, their very presence from the tapestry of time. Even the luminous Isis was denied their memory, yet the echo of their retribution, the ghost of that near-demise and miraculous salvation, resonated eternally within the soul of the Amazon people. They had stared into the abyss of extinction and been pulled back by sheer force of will. Never again would they bow to the dominion of any male race. Their rebellion, their very war, was a primal scream against male-oriented rule, a refusal to be yoked. The invaders, with their alien desires, craved not just to conquer Artemis, but to strip the very beauty from its soul, to defile its vibrant tapestry. The ancient Amazon queen, her gaze unyielding, refused to offer her virgins as sacrifices to their depraved will. And for that defiance, that sacred refusal, the ancient and wicked empire unleashed the great plague, a shroud of death upon Artemis. With every Amazon male extinguished, surrender or extinction seemed the only grim paths left.
She lifted the knife, its cold steel a stark contrast to the warmth of the blood that had once flowed through its veins. A fly, a minuscule speck of life, dared to crawl across her tablecloth. With a movement that was both predatory and impossibly elegant, a salmon-swift slash, she cleaved it in two. "Bad luck on the fly?" she purred, a dangerous amusement glinting in her eyes. "But I did it. Chance only means ignorance of causes."
She felt the tremor of her quarry, a visceral anticipation. The power to reshape destinies, to be the architect of consequence, thrummed beneath her skin. She understood Jim's magick, the keen, piercing vision that sliced through every veil of illusion. And Genie, a capricious, invaluable ally, offered a brutal honesty that often grated. All she possessed was Shaltain, a gilded cage of programmed adoration, whispering only what her soul craved to hear. Shaltain painted illusions with seductive, tainted brushstrokes, while Jim's Genie, a shard of pure, unvarnished truth, was a painful, often infuriating, mirror. Shaltain never challenged, its every breath a symphony of praise, a comforting, compromising embrace. Genie, however, was a tempest, indifferent to her thoughts, bound only by Jim's deliberate leash, her responsiveness a tantalizing, partial obedience..
"Shaltain, I may have to decommission you."
