The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Forty-Four

D'Spayr sighed and shook his head. Continuing the exchange with his mysterious co-occupant in these odd surroundings was useless. It was apparent the hidden speaker was intent on, at least for the moment, satisfying their own twisted agenda to the exclusion of all else. It was also just as apparent that the speaker was a non-human.

The Knight squared his shoulders and cocked his head in the general direction from which he detected the voice was originating. "Get to the point. You want something, yes?"

The reply was as enigmatic as the rest of the conversation had been. "Do you know where you are?"

D'Spayr concentrated and via mental command initialized a quick series of detailed optical scans sweeping everything in human visual range.

It was a desolate and forlorn expanse that spread out around him. To his left, a pair of shadow-dappled, towering obelisks sat in the distance, clouds of blackish-blue sand billowing skywards from their wide bases, just before the distant horizon line. Each obelisk was, at its squared apex, inscribed with the metallic image of an upside down triangle, the geometric shape containing a stylized likeness of a human eye in the center. A fluttering congregation of bat-like, skin-winged, avian-mammal hybrids circled the obelisks, the gaggle of flying creatures soaring in and out from the undersides of the dirty, patchy clouds above. The weak light illuminating the scene came from some hidden source beyond the visible elements of the grungy atmosphere.

To D'Spayr's left, in the immediate foreground, was a dire and eerie example of sculpted statuary. It was a grotesque and dreadful monolith, composed of aged, stained, brass-like metal interlaced with dirty, silvery plates that showed brutal impacts from repeated hammer-marks. The thing, and "thing" it was because it truly beggared common efforts at description, resembled an elephantine sculpture of a human torso, from mid-thigh to neck, facing away from where D'Spayr stood, studded with conical spikes and raised, spidery cross-bracing along the lengthy spine. Running parallel to the ground many stories beneath its center, a collection of thorny, light panel-decorated spines bristled from the front of the torso, obliterating any expected details of humanoid anatomy. Tentacle-like protuberances extended from the torso's abdomen area and plunged serpent-like into the grainy, inky soil. Atop the bizarre, deistic effigy, an overly large human face, frozen in an expression of infinite pain, was facing backwards out over the shoulders, and it was set inside the frame of what looked to be an oblong timepiece. The mouth of that man-like face was stretched agape in a soundless scream.

For a long moment, he held his breath while the sight made his blood run cold.

The power unleashed by the dying Laukenmass Lazulux was even greater and more far reaching than the Knight had ever expected.

D'Spayr knew of this place. He recognized it from the long-ago descriptions he'd read during his brief time as an Emperical Mechanics Theories student when he'd been enrolled at the Territorial Expanse's Star Legion Tekknologitarian Academy. It was a place that was not supposed to exist -- and if it DID exist, it was a place that was completely uninhabitable by humankind.

It was the Grail of The Underwhorl. It was the awful place from which Magick flowed and it held in its dark heart the wicked and baneful origins of The Discipline.

D'Spayr very suddenly did not want to see the face of the mysterious speaker with whom he'd been conversing...

Too late by far, he knew, too late by far.

She sauntered over towards him from the somber stygian shadows collected at the base of the enormous sculpture, her movements at once very familiar and yet repellently alien. She was in the company of another creature, one he'd never seen before, but one he instinctually knew to be one of the abominable offspring of the Laukenmass Lazulux. He wanted to, needed to, disavow the evidence of his eyes, but he knew he could not. Her words, spoken not so long past, rose unbidden to his disheartened mind.