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

Part 9, "...And We Heard the Roar of Dying Beasts"

                                                                                           ***

"How long has it been since we lost contact with the team?' Mune'stahr demanded. He wasn't disguising how very much recent events had put him on-edge.

"A fifth of a solar cycle," came the quick response. "Has your armor's communications neuro-link scanner been able to reconnect with Pylott?"

He shook his head. "So far as I can tell she's either inside a heavily shielded fortification or her suit's proximity telemetry data linkage neuro-system is offline."

Mune'stahr watched anxiously as NeeSharim, physically plugged into the dual terminal-ports of the shiftship's guidance system console, struggled to maintain gyroscopic balance and stabilization of The Glide while the vessel was caught in the giants' flyby slipstream. Their swift passing created a tornadic backdraft mighty enough to buffet the shiftship, shaking and spinning The Glide like an errant stone caught in a colossal cement mixer.

Mune'stahr still could not quite grasp what it was he had just seen... Two mammoth humanoid figures, each easily twenty-four to twenty-six meters in height and possessing a body mass likely exceeding eighteen thousand kilograms were enclosed in and astride what he could only theorize were wingless Zerorider extra-vehicular flow-harnesses. The metallic personal propulsion harnesses were worn around the giants' waists and shoulders, with stirrups that slipped over the front of their booted feet. One giant, the more warlike-looking of the pair, wore black onyx armor with bright violet and green linear piping tracing the contours along the outside of his legs, arms and sides. The other giant was encased in armor of a more abstract design, made from some duller, grainy material that possessed a wet sheen to its surfaces and was the orange-red color of burning charcoal. What little of their flesh Mune'stahr could see from cut-outs and translucent shells in various places on their climature-suits looked parchment dry and old, almost petrified, yet the giants moved with a slow and assured fluidity. The huge creatures, their overlarge heads encased in ornate helmets that did not conform to standard human skull shapes, soared past the cloaked Glide apparently unaware of the craft's presence as they patrolled the sky over Lobarth Ceryndum in what had to be some kind of pre-arranged search pattern. They were silent and aloof. Alien. They were looking for something, ... or someone ... , utilizing some kind of scanning device built into the forward-facing handle bars of the Zerorider harnesses. He didn't specifically know what they were doing, but he knew what they were, even though he'd never before encountered them. He'd only seen and read of them on encyclopedic historical data holovids...

Arkyngale Sentinels. They were creatures of distant pre-colonization legendry, beings of a time before the Ventriculum had been settled by its embryonic humanoid inhabitants. Coldly calculating, emotionless beings of vast intellect and enigmatic purpose who observed, surveyed and surveilled the physical boundaries of the Metaflow. Quantum cartographers and trailblazers scouting and recording spatial territories in service to the Arkyngales' cosmodynastic Monarchical BioPresence. They weren't supposed to exist anymore.

Truth be known, very little that had to do with the Arkyngales was theorized to still exist.

What worried Mune'stahr was that they were reputedly forerunners of violent catastrophe. Moreover, the Sentinels were thralls, bondservants to the greater Arkyngale aristocracy.

They were working for a very powerful someone who'd decided to takeinterest in what was happening in Lobarth Ceryndum.

"Is that for real? What ARE those things? In all the Raging Hells there be, WHAT am I LOOKING at?" Klauvane Tregg blurted from behind Mune'stahr. The rising panic in the Temporal Chronadigitator's voice was barely contained.