Insectoid: The Final Judgment

“A hundred years from now, someone will clear my name. And when that day comes, I will be immortal alongside you.” The Male Insect Preservation Academy, commonly known as the Male Academy, is notorious as a place that breeds failures, slackers, people with manic depression, and sadists. After maiming a royal cousin, Ninth Prince Eirland was sent away to a remote star to an academy called “Angel House.” Twelve years later, in order to balance the various factions, the royal family matched him with Claire Hornberg, the son of Marshal Hornberg and the youngest major general in the empire. People everywhere lamented that a rising star in the military had been brought low by a disabled male insect. On their wedding night, Claire knelt on the floor, coldly watching his male master sitting in a wheelchair, ready to leap up and subdue him the moment he raised his whip. Instead, the pale, gloomy young man told him to lift his hands, still shackled, then took hold of his wrists and entered the code to unlock the restraints. Eirland disliked being restrained, and he disliked becoming a restraint for someone else. So he readily agreed to Claire’s terms: the divorce deadline, providing mental guidance whenever Claire needed it each month, and not permanently marking him. Two years later, they met again at Selenmel Fortress. Eirland proposed a divorce as agreed. He had thought everything would end as peacefully as their agreement stipulated, but to his surprise, the usually composed Major General Hornberg knelt before him on one knee, eyes red. “If you agree to continue our marriage, I am willing to fulfill my duties,” he said slowly, with near difficulty. That was the last time Eirland helped Claire Hornberg mentally recover. Years later, the rebels descended upon the capital planet and threw him into prison alongside the other members of the royal family. On the eve of his trial, Eirland looked back on his life and still remembered an afternoon long ago, the silver-haired boy’s silhouette as he walked into the sunlight… “What’s your name?” “Eirland.” “Do you know you share a name with the star that guides ships? The expeditionary army is counting on you to bring them home from Dalworth.” * Claire wanted to give Eirland so many things: mechanical limbs that would help him stand, flowers that never withered through the seasons, a bright and tidy study, more books than he could ever finish, and a country without male preservation academies or female insect correctional facilities. Instead, he gave him a broken body, a bleak prison, baseless charges, and a name reviled for all eternity. That was why Eirland hated him. He never looked at him, spoke to him, or smiled at him. But none of that mattered. Claire had made a mistake, and it was only natural that Eirland was unhappy. Everyone who served at the Marshal’s residence knew there was an old wheelchair in Marshal Hornberg’s study. He sat in it while he worked, wheeled it up to the table at mealtimes, and pushed it around the garden at dusk, as if his young lover were still by his side. Told from Eirland’s point of view, in first person. By the story’s biological rules, Eirland is the top and Claire is the bottom. Theme: Imprisoned in body, heart turned toward the light