Mune'stahr and Pylott: HELLMARROW, a tale of the Ventriculum

Part 5, "Birthed by Chaos, We are the bloodiest of Miracles."

"This doesn't look good... Where are we? Why in Seven Devils are we here?" Klauvane Tregg's tone was rife with grim anxiety.

"I don't know," Mune'stahr said.

Poli'Artta Ranzireth joined the two men. She didn't even try hiding her growing sense of unease and worry. "We changed course. I could feel it. Why? What's going on?"

"I'm not sure," Mune'stahr admitted reluctantly. "But I have no doubt that NeeSharim has uncovered some new information concerning our mission that somehow relates to our new coordinates..."

"And how would she know to navigate to a place like this? We're off the map. We've traveled too deep in," Poli'Artta hissed past clenched teeth.

"I've got a feeling we're way beyond the jurisdictional reach of the Authoritarchs out here," Tregg said. "This is beginning to look a lot like the outermost borders of the Undefined Provinces..."

"Yes, there is indeed that likelihood," Mune'stahr said, his already brittle mood darkening.

"The Undefined Provinces. We shouldn't be here," Poli'Artta said glumly. "This is a bad place. There's nothing here but death."

A full Astronomical Unit, as distance was measured, beyond the mammoth statuary of The Frozen Kohlaussaye, they reached the Incidence Zone. It occupied an anchored interstitial convexity that, if it were it to be defined as a geophysical locale, was physically four times as large as the state of Alaska on planet Earth. On the outer rim of a gravitic Event Horizon, the confluence was identified as the 'Aggregotham Incendia' and it was a monstrous paradox of TimeSpace and visible asymmetric, baryogenetic antiparticles. As interpreted by the human eye, it looked like a vast liquid ocean the color of red wine, floating in space as a roughly disk-like configuration impaled by fifteen, one thousand story tall inverted thistle-stalks. Immense metallic bridges, open-topped tubes containing roadways, connected the towering thistle-stalks above the burgundy-hued oceanic waves at their bell-shaped blossom-heads, with each of those involucellian urn-heads being having the circumference of ten naval aircraft carriers. Free-floating Cation clouds created atmospheric winds that fanned across the sea, birthing rolling waves that surged and splashed against the huge thistle-stalk pillars that broke the sea's surface. Compared to the vastness of the Aggregotham Incendia, even a craft a massive as The Glide appeared comparatively to be little more than a large, silvery-white boulder streaking across the stormy panoramic horizon.

It was a forbidding and uninviting vista made even more macabre by the intermittent bombardment of glacial rock-ice that fell from out energetic electrical fields that resembled clouds. Between the clouds, in what would normally be called a "sky", the rock-ice fell from out vibrating oval holes of shadow to plummet into the wine-colored sea, exploding in bursts of orange flame.

Atop the centermost thistle-pillar's urn-head, they could see an uneven artificial skyline composed of a collection of closely-packed buildings. The narrow metal buildings were weathered and pitted, some leaning or bowed, sagging, indicative of great age and decay, and though they were lit from within by pallid, flickering lights, there was an undeniable darkness about them.

Lobarth Ceryndum.  Words, a joining of demonstrative adjectives actually, from an ancient pre-Authoritarchian, non-human Organyk, Sanguivylleate dialect that meant "The Mouth of the Serpent".

On the for'ard bridge, at the pilot console, Riktonn Mune'stahr stared solemnly at the image projected onto The Glide's jumbo mega-viewer screen.

"Your ship's Synthautotron A.I. is leading you into serious danger," Poli'Artta pressed, unable to take her eyes away from the expansive alien tableau displayed on the viewscreen.