"There was a time, following the last great triumph of the corrupt and tyrannical rule of the Has'Zyndamaggi Dominion, during the period immediately following the appearance of The Wound and the beginning of the Long Death, wherein the Emperium had initiated the Cosmic Revocation recalling the Faithful among their far-flung interplanetary colonies back to the homeworld of Teshiwahur, when the Outer Provinces seized power over their domains and engaged in quiet treasons and subtle counter-conspiracies against the ruling houses of nobility. During this time, there was an evolution and growth in the use of alien Offworld mercenaries, some of whom became popular among the rebel warlords and scheming political provocateurs who frequently recruited these rogue, independent Agents of Change.And some of these mercenaries achieved legendary status as powerful shapers of history. One such Agent of Change was rumored to be an alien from the Upworlds, known only by the name of "Pilgrim"...
-- excerpt from Book III, "Effects of the Stellar Revocation", Calindrogg's Wartime Histories After the Collapse, the Orbital Heliar 98, Post-Wound, prior to the 1st Continental Reconstruction
"Nar'quee chay-lan do'asleth vantae ke-vi'rann hulgeth nume."
Translation: "The pinnacle of sophistication in the ruthless exercise of warfare, is to dominate and subdue the enemy by using his own weapons against him."
-- Commander-General Lord Phyn'Harletas, Hero of the Emperium, on the eve of his invasion of the outlaw Kingdom of Kiroth, on the southern continent
Seventeen years before meeting the cursed, tragedy-haunted princess Nygeia, and before his vengeful campaign to end the tyranny and oppression of the corrupt Emperium as their sovereignty fell to ruin, a young Knight, inexperienced and alone, encounters a vast and lethal conspiracy that threatens his catastrophe-stricken world.
1. FORYNNUHR
It waited.
In the silent Wastes a colossus stood, a cracked and scarred monument of stone and mortar, old as the stones that lay broken at its feet. The colossus was a giant, in aspect more demon than man, a dark tribute to an ancient warrior of renown, once the servant to a king from shadowy antiquity. The statue, built from the blood, sweat and sinew of slaves, was a graven image of the hopes and heroic dreams forgotten by a people lost to Time.
There suddenly was a sound, like the ringing of a huge bell at the bottom of a stone well, and a crackle of night-black lightning seared the air, leaving more than an optical after-image, leaving an actual scar floating in the space above the dry, cracked soil of the plain. A shape stepped out from the rip in the air. A Pilgrim, tall, dour and solitary, emerged and, after taking a brief moment to survey the bleak landscape, began to journey through the terrain's wide expanse, a Wasteland torn by Time, drained of beauty, touched by Chaos. He wrapped his voluminous cloak tightly around his armored body as he noticed the approach of a distant storm from over the horizon, steadily drawing nearer.
He came in answer to a Summons. Something primordial, malignant and angry in this place of neglected memories called him to reluctant duty. He was not a native to this world and on many occasions he found treading its soil unpleasant and uncomfortable, but he could not ignore the urgent beckoning that seized his mind and body and inflamed every molecule of his being as he was transported from his far away home. Yet when he arrived at this solemn place, he had been, as ever, transformed, becoming more muscular and athletic, taller, more sensorily perceptive, and physically redressed, garbed in dark gray metal, an exoskeletal, multi-segmented battle armor and a voluminous cape inscribed with interlocked runic symbols. Stoic, he trudged past the colossus, deeper into the surrounding panorama of desolation.
The name by which he was known among the nomadic tribes of the Withered Lands was "Forynnuhr".
He knew where he was. He waited to rendezvous with the force which had whisked him away from his own world to this place of forgotten kings. A weathered nomad had once told him that the territory he traveled was once a flowering oasis of energy, creativity and life, a haven to the wise and the best. His hawkish profile half-hidden by his winged helmet, the traveler's face was nonetheless twisted into a sneer. Now all that remained was broken stone, seemingly endless acres of arid and brittle soil, and the broken debris from a hundred thousand antediluvian lives passed into ruin...
Something about that memory amused the silent Pilgrim. He took a moment to cease his journey and stare back at the towering statue of the nameless warrior. Perhaps one day some powerful personage would abduct a few hundred impoverished peasant souls and then beat and whip them into bondage to erect a monument to him, Forynnuhr, and his stony likeness would stare coldly down upon the Wasteland.
And it, too, would impassively and patiently wait, lost to Time, Myth and Memory. He did not find anything comforting in that thought.
These were grim and solemn times upon this, the planetary Homeworld of the mighty galactic Emperium. Betrayed by a quantum-nuclear cancer that was corrupting the physical matrices of both Time and Space, the giant planet Teshiwahur, known only through legendry to a few of the denizens of the distant Upworlds as the planet "Brimstone", was engaged in a fifty orbital heliar-long struggle to survive a relentless and implacable, slow-motion cataclysm that had turned the foundations of its proud existence to little more than shifting sand.
Nations went to war over dwindling planetary resources, the economies of nations plummeted into insolvency as currencies became valueless, continental and territorial Kingdoms rose and fell in the throes of seemingly endless wars, formerly miraculous technologies failed, were ingeniously reborn and then later perverted in ways that would have formerly been unimaginable, and then failed again.
And then the planetary ecology began to collapse and mutate as weather systems changed their polarity, reversing centuries of climatological dependability: large bodies of water dried up, rivers disappeared, and the oceans grew more turbulent and more violent, vast forests became infested with mold and alien spores and the trees died or petrified, deserts grew hotter and expanded, widening their arid borders, and at the poles.
The Pilgrim had watched this all from afar, impassive and emotionless, carefully analyzing the flow of events to see how he could best benefit from the chaos.
The sound of a tolling bell abruptly resonated through the air, a metallic, atonal, clamorous peal of unhallowed acoustics. He quickly looked around, surveying the landscape for telltale signs of an approaching enemy. Nothing. And then, to his left some three dozen meters away, a smear of grayish mist materialized above the ground. The image momentarily throbbed and pulsed, as if it were experiencing difficulty achieving and refining optical focus. Next, the mist became opaque and it reformed itself into what could only be described as a crack in the air, much like a fracture line running across a glass surface. Something man-sized and vaguely humanoid in shape abruptly surged forth from the fracture, as if expelled from another distant location to this one. Another traveler, another alien to this world, much like himself. The image refined into that of a Celestial Seraph floating over the dry grit of the plain, a soiled and mucky jewel expelled from out a tumor on the sun. Yet, despite the creature's repellent unwholesomeness, it was beautiful.
Or perhaps it was its beauty that made it repellent, especially here on dying world like Teshiwahur.
He felt his hackles rise. It was one of The Messengers, one of the last of the infamous Empyrean Host, the godlike mutant chimeras that had evolved from the torn Megacosm in the Aftermath of The Wound. The creature was named "Atu'ihma".
Forynnuhr felt a rare flash of fierce anger. The Messenger was one of the Celestial Empyreans. It was an alien from one of the Rimworlds at the edge of the extraplanetary territories of the Emperium. Such creatures were not allowed egress into Teshiwahurian sovereign lands unaccompanied by a representative of the Emperium. Its presence here at this place was a borderline insult. On a more personal note, he, himself, hated the entire breed.
What's more, he had thought he had killed all of them many orbital heliars ago...
"I would have thought you would be the last being in the universe who would willingly subject themself to meet with me," Forynnuhr said, his rich baritone voice sounding dry and crisp around the edges. Transit between the Upworlds and Teshiwahur was rarely a pleasant experience and even bodies accustomed to it sometimes showed frayed edges. The quantum-electrochemical punishment a human body underwent from such an unnatural transition was quite extreme.
Swathed in a chiseled metal foil carapace over a loose-fitting pale tunic, Atu'ihma floated stationary above the ground and, while translating human speech and thinking of a response, pursed his thin lips before saying, "If I understand your reference correctly, you refer to our previous engagement during the Sacred Mutagenesis Campaigns. That was during a time of war. We are no longer combatants in a death struggle. There is no need for rancor." The Celestial Empyrean paused as he searched his mind for a way to conclude his thought using human speech. "Holding what you would call a 'grudge' would be unproductive."
"Then what you are saying is that I needn't worry anymore about you plotting my death in retaliation for murdering your family and kin," Forynnuhr said. He paused, waiting for a reaction from Atu'ihma and, when he did not get one, he continued with, "Hmmmn, well, perhaps 'murder' isn't quite the right word. After all, you can't really murder something that isn't truly alive, right? If I remember correctly, members of the Empyrean Host were more like pre-programmed, anthropoidal bio-simulacra, meaning ape-like biological robots, than actual living beings."
The Messenger rapidly blinked once, twice, three times and then clenched its jaw muscles before resuming a placid demeanor and saying, "As I said, the Sacred Mutagenesis Campaigns were a long time ago. It was a period of great turmoil and much death. It is time to put such things behind us. We have new business to which we need to attend."
Forynnuhr nodded, noting the Rimworld alien's controlled reaction at the notion that he and his people were machine-like Things as opposed to sentient creatures, and he decided to move on from taunting the creature. "So who issued the Summons that drew me here?"
"Not a 'Who', but a 'What'," Atu'ihma said. "The Summons was triggered by the planetary Central Analytics Inquisitive Data Reactor responding to a drastic change in existing inter-networked planar synergism. To be clearer, the Autonomous Administrative Command Node of the last remaining Managing Intercontinental Computer Network on this world noticed something was very, very wrong and decided the only way to fix it was through the use of an outside resource."
"A planetary supercomputer selected me and yanked me across Space and Time to fix a problem it analyzed as dangerous? And then it sent one of the last remaining extraplanetary biological computer constructs to rendezvous with me and give me my marching orders?"
"Yes."
"That's almost funny. It's as if this Autonomous Administrative Command Node was secretly afraid of making direct human contact."
"Humorous? No, I can't say I agree," Atu'ihma said, raising an eyebrow. "Were I you, I would think it would be a sign that something frightening is occurring."
"Humorous or frightening, it's the same thing. If you think about it, it's the same thing," the Pilgrim said nastily. "Just a matter of perspective."
"As you say," the creature responded noncommittally. "In any case, the Autonomous Node needs you to be aware that within the confines of the necropolis beyond where we stand, a representative of an anti-Emperium terrorist faction is waiting to meet with you. An Offworld terrorist faction. The representative is non-affiliated with the terrorists. They are using him to avoid appearing on the surveillance watch list of the Hegemonic Territorial Police Militia. You must exercise extreme caution in your interactions with this individual."
"Off world? You're saying these so-called terrorists are likely survivors of the Extraplanetary Expansionist Forces crusade? As in they were enemies of the Emperium's Star Legion? So why send a member of the Empyrean Host to Teshiwahur to give me such a vague warning message?"
"You understand, don't you, that we of the Host can traverse the chronal Timeways?" Atu'ihma said. "To us, all of Time is paraphysical, a vast network of periodicic oceans connected by a series of rivers. Time is structured, but it is also liquid, dynamic, incompressible with a definite volume, but having no fixed shape. We of the Host can travel backwards and forwards through its interdimensional web of vibratory particles and so we are privy to knowledge of events on multiple levels."
"Yes, yes, I get it. For any single event, you and your kin can see all possible eventualities," Forynnuhr concluded impatiently.
"Then you understand," the Celestial Empyrean said, appearing satisfied with his explanation of things.
Aggravated, the Pilgrim wanted to throttle the creature with his gauntleted metal talons. "Understand what, dammit?"
"That the person with whom you will rendezvous was sent here to meet you by another version of you, yourself, from a different location in Multicosmic Time."
A Paradox. Hell and damnation. Forynnuhr decided he should have been a lot more precise back when he was gleefully exterminating the Celestial Empyreans.
He should have made double sure he had slaughtered every last one of them.
"Will you be following me to this rendezvous?" Forynnuhr asked.
"Will I be accompanying you? Absolutely not," the Empyrean said. Forynnuhr would have sworn he'd detected a hard, even aggressive tone to the creature's words, but visually, the alien's face was as unexpressive and placid as if they'd been discussing nothing of value at all. "I am here at the behest of the planetary network's Autonomous Administrative Command Node. We few survivors of the violent purge you initiated during the Sacred Mutagenesis Campaigns owe the Great Machine a deep and enduring debt. We repay our debts."
"Do you now?"
The Celestial Empyrean broke character for a small, but intense moment as he regarded the Pilgrim. There was an inferno in his glare and a hint of something unwholesome, something insane, behind his small, crooked smile. "Oh yes. We repay all our debts, no matter how long it takes and no matter what effort we must expend. The scales will be, must be, balanced."
And with those words gently echoing on the soft, hot breeze that blew across the Wastes, the creature's physical image rippled and warped, then gradually faded from sight.
It took a moment for Forynnuhr to notice he'd been holding his breath and that his heart had briefly been racing. He realized that this moment had been the first time in ages he'd felt a trickle of fear.
It was intoxicating.
* * *