The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Twenty-Eight

After that, ancient tribal antagonisms and old vendettas once again inflamed the region.

So it was that, many generations of strife and conflict later, the reptile scientists, those known to be amoral Sauromorphan Phylogenticists, broke and mapped the biogenetic code for their species. It was through that amazing act that the mutants and the bio-synthandroids of the Incubatorium gene-factory were created.

But what NO ONE knew was that the evolution of the Pang Xa'Omathra region was subtly guided by the hands of The Overhelm, a secretive cabal of other-dimensional, alien ultrabeings also called Void Gods. Virtually immortal, they were strange beings who each controlled a different paraphysical aspect of the dimensional Outlands at the edges of the greater Multiverse. They had powerful extrasensory psychic influence over the lesser biological entities within their spheres of influence. It had been the Void Gods who had given the reptiles the inspiration, and the eventual gift, of untangling the very seeds of their creation. And it had been the Void Gods who, through manipulation and dark magick, kept the fierce flames of evolutionary bigotry and species-hatred alive in the hearts and minds of the weak and the bitter on both sides of the racial and cultural divides. No one knew...

And if anyone HAD known of it, if they came to truly understand what it was that was going on at the edge of the Cold Sea, under the shadow of the massive spinning rock called The Ke'Tareveel, they would have wept indignantly, cursing Fate, and cursing all of Creation.

Because the Void Gods played a heartless, ruthless game competing against one another where the expansive spilling of blood, both human and reptilian, was an irresistably addictive delight.

To such as they, Life, as human beings understood it, was a relentless storm of endless warfare played out for their amusement.

Worse still, the reptilian being named Zhe'Kae-Chah was among the favored of the multitude of silly, primitive gnats they controlled. The Dragon, and the weapon of the cruel and pitiless fury that motivated his every decision, was foremost among their most cherished pawns.

The words still haunted him. "You know you were born from monsters, don't you?"

... end of Interlude ...

Zhe'Kae-Chah, massively muscled arms folded behind him under the inner arc of his relaxed wings, stood before the open dual doors to an expansive balcony atop the northwest turret of one of Ometh Nastreq's architecturally-ornate, palatial minstry buildings. He smiled frostily as he watched the skies. His vision was eight times more keen than even the best and most optically-gifted of Teshiwahur's human huntsmen. With a patience that bordered on lassitude, he watched a shiny metallic dot in the distance approaching at a diagonal to the centermost street and boulevard layout of the government center, flying under the military's parameters for defensive radar. He could see they were trying to use the glare from the planet's setting suns to help mask their approach from any observers below.

It was Captain Rae'vynn Wyyng's ship, the Aerieakon.

He did not turn around at the approach of the warlord, Arvenall Dampiko, and his trusted commander, Mikaas Drem. The Dragon lazily tilted his head towards them and said, his thick, reverberant voice rumbling, "Soon the killing will begin in earnest."

                                                                                               * * *

Since childhood, after the wintry passage of a particularly violent storm, he had always wondered, listening to the hushed and awestricken talk of the superstitious peasant folk with whom he'd once lived, whether or not there really were such things as "gods". Science told him there were not.