The Withered Land, THE EMPIRE FALLS: HELL'S AVATAR

HELL'S AVATAR -- PART TWENTY-FOUR

The creature was swathed in a tunic, layered over a form-fitting sheath-suit, covered by a scapular with oval-shaped epaulets and a high-collar with an attached cowl. The outer tunic was decorated with inlaid metal patches, designs that reflected an alien prehistoric bestiary, and there were arabesque cut-outs at the rib cage and pectoral regions revealing the silver metal of the sheath suit. Around its thick waist area was a gleaming belt that possessed a flattened dragon-like creature's fearsome face as its buckle. From under the spike-studded shoulder epaulets, the things thick and muscular arms were covered with elaborate multi-banded sleeves that, at its wrists, were attached to flexible overlapping segments attached to a metal glove from which grew large, saw-toothed axe-blades as fingers. There were six such fingers to each hand and the fingers were half the size of an adult man. The creature's thick legs were encased in lizard-scaled, metallic leggings with overlapping shells. On each massive knee was a protective knee-shield onto which a bas-relief carving of an alien beast's screaming skull had been imprinted. From mid-calf down, each of the thing's booted feet were lost in a hill of sand and shattered stone.

But it was the savage colossus' head that transfixed any and all observers. Atop the chimeric alien creature's mighty neck was a head made for nightmares. The huge skull was in the roughly triangular shape of a warrior's shield and it was both lipless and without a nose. Under its prominent brow, it had a set of three glowing, almond-shaped eyes set side by side. It's rough, leathery dark flesh was covered with blood-red patterns, like massive intricate tattoos, and, one to each side of its head, a massive curved horn the color of aged bronze arched out from where ears would have been on a human being. And floating on the night air around that huge head was a radiant, turbulent and continually-morphing halo of orange-red energy, like serpents made from lightning. The towering behemoth gave off an invisible, physical vibratory aura that shook and rattled the insides of anyone nearby with much the same effects as an assault of low frequency harmonics.

Such a creature was an impossibility. It was beyond the classification of merely being "alien", it was an abomination, a nightmare made flesh. No known species of sentient life form was a match for such an amalgamation of bizarre characteristics.

This was one of the legendary HyperLords. This was Dessimathiah, the Dreaming Executioner.

Slowly, the Avatar turned its great head from side to side, surveying the landscape, taking in the human drama unfolding before it on the blood-splashed sands below. And then the towering monolithic, ancient alien began to walk menacingly deeper into the necropolis, towards the Duskhelm Priory...

That was when the thundering cannons of Bur'heddam opened fire on it.

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While under the glare of moonlight outdoors, the giant Xherim'efarr alien, Dessimathiah, focused his growing homicidal ire towards the impudent, miniscule human vermin scurrying at his feet. Inside the musty, lower levels of the Duskhelm Priory, violent chaos was unleashed upon the normally tomb-like stillness.

A quintet of angry Ashen Brood Tekk-specialists had burst into the chamber, unexpectedly encountering Forynnuhr as he had rummaged at a junction console connecting a pair of cable-terminated power nacelles. Two of the five men carried sear-guns at readiness, already alerted to the invasion of their sanctuary by hostile intruders. The Pilgrim had anticipated their presence, his clairsentient sense of perimeter-awareness warning him of their approach by sensing their minds ahead of the arrival of their physical bodies, and, as a defense, he had unleashed a deadly pyrokinetic bolt, brutally setting them aflame.