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

Part 10, "They Bleed, We Burn, Together We Die..."

An iceberg-sized section of structured control flow deconstructed and broke away from the greater architecture of the macro-routine, falling into a matrical subspatial hole that reverberated with the fragment's passing, sending ripples along the larger framework that left wide crevices and cracks that bled Reality.

The Walls were coming down...

The unexpected ferocity of the assault was dangerously close to overcoming their defenses. At the rate of disassembly he was observing, it wouldn't be much longer before the Faction was breached.

Monsters from the Paranescience. Cyborg terrorists, bio-deviants, artificially created mutants, malformed teratogenic aberrations, cross-space alien gene-trash... Homicidal beasts with the power of dwarf stars. The giant seated in the flying Phasis Throne had long ago counseled his more senior, noble kindred that the chaotic Paranescience and its ruler would eventually become an unmanageable thorn in the side of Cosmic Order, but they had decided -- wrongly -- that his warnings and protestations were products of alarmist paranoia. Damn them, damn all of them.

Tegryimm Xolak engaged in a brief series of mental calculations, barely noticed the looping elliptical orbits of the other six Phasis Thrones as they followed their preset intersequenced paths throughout the Antidifferential Polyhedrum's spatial interior. The mathematical exercises kept him calm, helped him maintain mental clarity without disengaging him from the situation at hand. The composite interior of the Antidifferential Polyhedrum, a compact, non-orientable planar immersion arranged as an interlocked set of chambers enclosed in a pocket of unstable Null-Space, was the heart of the Authoritarch's Prismatic Faction. Xolak, the Paladin Prime of the Authoritarchs, leader of the Sentry Protective, was agitatedly killing time as he waited for his Authoritarch brethren, a contentious and fractured group of ancient parahuman intellects, to come to a decision about how to best handle the Black Sun Seraph named Kahlyndaar's relentless physical onslaught.

There hadn't been any kind of open rebellion against the Celestial Syndicate of Multiversity in over nine hundred solar orbital heliars. Not since the armies of the upstart Usurper, Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh, also known as "The World-Father" from the planet Teshiwahur, had invaded the Metaflow from a breach they'd created in the Shroud Gates, the Obscuratotem, which was hidden inside the turbulent, macro-radioactive storm called the "Makkaryenne Elasticity". The World-Father and the forces of the Hegemonic Emperium had been forcibly repelled, sent back to their dirty and primitive Einsteinian universe, and Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh had been cruelly punished for his arrogance, his fleshly humanity stripped away for all time. But at that time, the Authoritarchs had taken the matter of their dominance and security quite seriously. In the generations since, they'd become complacent, lax content to let the Prime Paladin handle things on his own while they pursued loftier endeavors. Xolak had seen the power and influence of the Paranescience grow, he knew what Infernyya Rebekkon could do, knew that of which she was capable. He warned them. Yet nothing came of it. Now, Kahlyndaar was pummeling his way into their Holy of Holies, their innermost Sanctum of Power. The sovereignty of the Authoritarchs was clearly in danger of being demolished.

And Tegryimm Xolak was left sitting in anticipation, waiting for the other Authoritarchs, primarily Morgefane, Phraktycine and Heurassent, but especially Wenshalla Hax, to finish their audience with an Outworld-Otherverse creature identifying itself as The Vanguard of the Void Gods, a "Principal Diplomatic Liaison", from the direful Mokaeren Host.

The Outsider called itself "Encydiunathe" and it was of an aristocratic blood-lineage belonging to the Mokaeren demigod called "Quhr", the Void God's dreaded Invoker of Judgment.

"The Beasts have awakened, hungry to take your power from you. Despite all you've done for them, despite the sacrifices you've made to protect them from the wildness and fury of the Metaflow Itself, even from their own violent natures, they champ at the bit, they plot behind your back, they sneer at any mention of your names, and instead of showing you gratitude, they snarl in your face. They are beasts and it is in their nature. They will rebel against you. Change, the ONLY constant in all the many universes, is coming. It comes whether you are ready or not. Listen, you can hear it. Out there, hammering at the walls of your highest, most sacred sanctuary," Encydiunathe said from the podium at which he stood near the Compass of Multiversal Eminence. The Multiversal Compass was the heart of the quantum-web whereby the Authoritarchs could map and mark their amalgamated territories. The Vanguard of the Void Gods, "Void Gods" being the term the Mokaeren Host had adopted when commonly referring to themselves, spoke with the smoothly assured oratory skills of a hyper-competent diplomat. "It is the sound of evolution run amok, of transformative progress and expansion in the claws and fists of mammalian human rabble, too blinded by their animal appetites and their mortality to know what it is they are wrestling to tear down. The Host have weathered such change, in times past, and we have learned to shape it and redirect it so that it is WE who control it and not the reverse. In the spirit of equanimity and rapprochement, we offer you the benefits of our knowledge."