INFERNO: The BAP Emperor and his Shieldmaidens of the Red Scare Wage Blood War On Führer Fuentes
In the Kingdom of Steel, Virgil and the Traveller stand before the Court of the Bronze Age Pervert Emperor, where the Roman's queries are answered.
“Marvellous! Simply marvellous! My darlings!” The Bronze Age Pervert Emperor clapped giddily as he rolled around in his chair giggling. “I absolutely must hear more of your journeys: they are such sweet nectar to mine ears! Why can’t you perform odes like these, cursed wretch!” he kicked a terrified lutist to the floor before the youth scurried out of the room.
“So what would you have? For I must surely recompense you for such a performance! Care you for jewels of gold? Or how about a sword of our most strong steel? Or I could bring you a girl? Or boy perhaps?” he smiled sickly.
“Your Imperial Worship is most beneficent," said Virgil, concealing his unease, “but I had been meaning to inquire of your Highness something: so perhaps the answer to mine entreaty could be our reward?”
“Of course,” smiled the Emperor sickly. “What noble Spartan abstemiousness thine virtue is crowned with,” he smirked: “Go on: your inquiry is my command.”
“Very well,” said Virgil, “I hath been meaning to ask: where are all the women in this realm? For unless mine eyes deceive me, I have not glimpsed but a single one since we entered.”
“Women, women, women!” droned the Emperor mockingly, “all everyone talks about is womenz! If you must know,” he sighed, “we do have women in our Kingdom,” he took a long sip from his goblet of wine. “Bring them forth,” he said disinterestedly as he waved his hand at a page, “bring mine sisters forth!” He restlessly clicked his fingers twice as courtier scurried off through the purple silk curtain behind the throne.
And then straight away from out of its violet drapes ran two harlots giggling madly before us. They were barely clothed, attired in shortest tunics as they spiralled recklessly holding each other's waists, towards the foot of the throne. “Our Emperor,” they bowed wryly in mock deference, as a grimace flashed across Virgil’s face.
“My beloveds, my sisters,” the Emperor cooed, “come to me, my beautiful ones,” he lilted as he embraced the two courtesans, kissing them upon their lips in vile and lascivious manner.
“Here,” he held them both round the waist as he turned to the court, “these are mine sisters and mine loves. Come, be not a’feared,” he looked at Virgil and I. “Let me introduce to you the Shieldmaidens of the Red Scare, high Oracle-harlot Priestesses of doom, and my paramours.1 I here present the Dasha of Nekrasova and the Anna of Khachiyan, attention whores of such a calibre that the entire underworld doth not know their like.”
“Pleased to make thine acquaintance, traveller,” the Nekrasovite laughed in high pitched trill, as both then performed exaggerated curtsies before us in feigned formality. And as the Anna of Khaciyhan rose, she did then salaciously wink at me, and I was startled, and grimaced and flinched. Looking over at the Roman as a bitter chill ran down my spine, I saw he was wincing too.
“Come, brother,” the Anna of Khaciyan murmured, rubbing the Emperor’s shoulders and kissing the nape of his neck, “let us drink wine of the red grape and the powder of glycine, and whisper our secrets to one another, for we have sore missed you, oh bronzed and beauteous one: Our God-King.”2
“Oh please take us into your chamber and let us while away the hours in libation and song,” the Dasha then whispered in lachrymose tones, sickly sweet and mournful, into his ear.
“Sisters, loves: enough,” the Emperor pled in affected modesty, “for we have guests.” And at that they sighed, and kissing his hand, ran to the Raw-Milk legionary to both sit on his lap. The soldier started and recoiled, before regaining his martial composure.
“But great Emperor: what of the other women?” Virgil asked, “for there must be more than two of their sex.”
“Well,” Lucretius stepped forth as BAP rolled his eyes, “on that matter there stand a great many theories,” he began to pace.
“Some say the womenz left because they were too weak, and as such not able to withstand the martial prowess of Our Land. Others that a great ruler long ago drowned them all in a well, much like we do our runts, because he could not abide their incessant moaning. Others still say that they went a’journeying and even now remain on Odyssey, like the ent-wives, searching for arable pastures that they will one day lead us into as Hebrews into the Chosen Land. And,” he added nervously, “some more say still that they were stolen, and now dwell in the Land of the Black Sun, taken by our enemies, like the Sabine women.”
“Treachery most vile! Betrayal most black!” the legionaries shouted. “Death to the Black Sun!”
“I care not for the fate of the womenz,” the Emperor twirled his bronze goblet around in his hand, “for look to your own experience,” he turned to Virgil and I. “Didst thou not just escape a dismal matriarchy, that of Queen,” he spat, “Queen Candace and her dismal darkest black magicians of the third-world: I talk of course of the Brothers Tate!” he spat again. “Yes, Queen Candace, is a most vile blackamoor wench, and when she feels the might of our steel swords she will be driven back to furthest “A-freaka” whence she came!”3
“You know,” he adopted a more measured tone, “the only reason she prophesies her slanders about the Zionists and the Frankists, Israel and the great-mystic Netanyahu: is simply because she’s an angry blackened lady with a heart more blackened still. She’s a feminist! Who sees fit to lecture us men from her dismal matriarchy. ‘Tis vile and against nature I decree! This secret I tell you now out of my Imperial kindness, and because you seek Truth, so you say.”
“Well Virgil, he seemeth to have the measure of the Queen at least. I had not even considered that her matriarchy was an echo of the first rung,” I whispered to the Roman. But he simply sighed.
“There is one other subject, Emperor,” Virgil then said as he bowed. “I have heard mentioned now much this war you fight: the civil strife that casts its dismal blood-shadow upon this land. I pray that your Imperial Majesty may now explain to us lowly journeyers: whence came this violent discord?”
There was a hushed silence as BAP jumped down from his throne, his greyed eyes a’glinting as he sung forth in lament:
“Our tragedy is so dismal that like fellow it has none, but tell you I shall: the tale of The Land of Steel, and that accursed Black Sun!
“Dear travellers. Our story begins long, long ago, when this Empire was one united land. Then in the recesses of misted time, all of our peoples did jointly worship the Sun of the sky and the Steel of the barbell. In harmony alike did we all despise the lower realms, and the womenz and non-whites that spewed their blasphemies there and did despoil it: such was the character of Our Nation’s glorious unity. But one day discord most treacherous in origin did bud forth its grapes of wrath.
“It was when rose up from outer darkness, a young chaos magician, now made Führer: the cursed Fuentes. He did embitter our people one against other, as our land cried out its lament’es. For the Führer did proclaim blackest slanders on us, calling us Pagans and then worse still: Hebrews. Yes, he even said I was of the Synagogue and a Talmudist! Vilest calumny and Fakest News!” BAP winced.
“And so, taking with him many of our finest young soldiers, he founded a rival polity with his dismal acolytes on the frontiers of our Empire. To this day it is there they now remain, and in their terrible diabolism worship another Germanic God most monstrous. For they give obeisance to not the noble Friedrich of Nietzsche who instituted our polis, but instead the dread Hitlor and his darkest Black Sun. Make no mistake, this Sun they bow before is no longer the golden one we used to jointly bathe under, but instead its shadowed imposter: the stellar darkness of the spinning Sonnenrad.4 It is said by some that such has its rayed blackness shone on them that it too has blackened their very souls, and so now they even consort in sick affinity with the very blackamoors themselves!” He turned his greyed eyes to us as they flashed blood-red with mania.
“Verily I lie not, for I have heard it whispered on the wind that Führer Fuentes was even for a time allied with the Khan of Ye! Truly canst thou imagine a thing more dismal? An Aryan allied with a moor?” he spat. “As such we now fight them in bitter blood-war to the death: and rest we shall not until they are crushed into the blood and soil, they do so claim to love: Wiped from the face of this Infernal Earth, all shot to death, with our arrows from above.”
The Court was silent. Even the gibbering whore-oracles of the Red Scare sat mute, with their painted visages cupped in their harlots hands. For the tragedy of this nation’s plight did weigh so heavily on all, it cast down even them from their customary a’whored gaiety.
“But enough of that,” the Emperor clapped. “For it is time we attend The Games! Mine eyes need sport to feast on!”5
“Red Scare” was their form of spell casting, for it was said their sorceries were crimson blood hexes originally formed in the Infernal ring of Communism. Here they had escaped that rung, and were now transmuted and Hellenised to better hex all enemies of the Imperium with their harlots’ charms. Why they had alighted in this land specifically remained unclear, but blackest rumour would circulate amongst their opponents that the Shieldmaidens were but harlots and “fag-hags” (this speculation was later outlawed under punishment of death as a vile calumny on both their and the Emperor’s honour).
“Glycine” was one of the Emperor’s many favoured powdered supplements, said to give him an immortal vitality (NAC and Vitamin-D were the others that comprised this trinity of elixir’d wellness).
This being the Emperor’s derogatory appellation for the African continent.
The Germanic mesmerisms of this whirling mosaic had long ago bewitched many of the land’s young, who under its sway took up arms against their native patria. Many of this insurrection then joined the newly formed rebel polity of the Black Sun under its rebel leader Fuentes (later elected Führer after the Domus was burnt down in an act of arson suspected to be staged). The power of the Sonnenrad’s spinning stellar rays were said to be due to its blending of both pagan occultism and nationalism, turned there sickly amalgam, unhealthy and dark under its black light.
As a consequence of the civil war and associated meat and milk rationing, weekly games were held in the Colosseum to appease the populace and keep up morale amongst the legionaries. Such was the frequency of these violent spectacles that regular raiding parties had to be undertaken to lower rungs to provide foils for the soldiers’ blood-lusts.