(CHAPTER 36) INTERLUDE
From: The Crile K'ashil's Chronicles Of Dissent.
The descendants of the Asa had recreated Firstworld in a multiplicity of images. Over thousands of successive generations, their mental abilities had been refined, sharpened. On the strength garnered by these powers were constructed mighty Dynasties. The strongest of these "Castes" or K'ashils, were those of the dark, bloody- natured Ket and their mightier enemies, the Emen.
For thousands of generations, these near immortals ruled Firstworld, increasing and fine tuning their own powers while suppressing those of the five Lower Houses. Eventually, every individual would belong to one of the seven Houses.
Each Yloi occupied a niche suited to that individual's abilities and greatest strengths. But the Yloi were a people set firmly upon a path of conquest and domination. Their aggression was inbred, a great storehouse of potential, focused upon the acquisition of power. The drive toward conquest led them to attack and absorb every other sentient race upon Firstworld. Until in time, the Yloi ruled without challenge.
In the time known as the First Epoch, hundreds of centuries before the Yloi expanded offworld, swarming like locusts across their galaxy, the Ket were the most warlike, their great minds deeply engaged in the practice and cultivation of the Jhexadren synHarm, literally "Dark Mysteries."
These Mysteries contained the black Arts, sorcery, necromancy, called Huriya by the Ket. The Ket used their mastery of these Mysteries to war against the Emen, hoping to bring them under their shadowy influence.
The Emen were amoral, devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and hegemony. While some of their number tread the path of the Jhexadren syn Harm, investigating the Mysteries in order to further the reach of their control, the Emen were largely occupied with exploring the realm of the mind. They had cultivated the natural powers inherent within their minds, becoming like unto great sorcerers themselves but mainly shunning the Jhexadren syn Harm.
In the First Great War between the Ket and the Emen, the Emen were able to subdue their dark brethren through the use of these powers. But the Ket had taken many victims from among the Emen and for a while both Caste-Houses were greatly reduced.
And much of Firstworld was damaged by the Great War. Both Emen and Ket retreated to their respective quarters to heal, and plan for the future.
It was during this recession that their servants among the Lesser Houses gained a measure of ascendancy. Centuries of carefully controlled breeding by the Great Houses had ensured that the Lesser Houses would never equal them in power. But still were they Yloi.
The Crile, servants of the Emen, and the Fend ai Vex, who served the Ket, were the next Houses to strive for control of the planet's resources. As the Great Houses licked their wounds, the Crile and Fend began their own struggle for power. This struggle began the time known as The Middle Epoch.
Even in that dark time, the Crile-Caste were students of the sciences. They made study of the physical world as well as the laws that governed its existence. (It was a Crile scientist who would discover the secret that would give the Yloi the ability to reshape worlds.) The Crile also endeavored to unlock the metaphysical mysteries. They were the great philosophers and sages of the Yloi. Even the mighty Emen often consulted Crile Scholars to glean Truths about the nature of reality. It was from these early Crile explorations, these philosophical seeds, that their own eventual decision to turn away from the path of conquest would evolve.
The Crile of the Middle Epoch believed that the ways of Emen and Ket represented two extremes; opposing polarities that must certainly pull the Yloi race apart. But the Emen and Ket were far more powerful than the Crile could hope to become. They were the Masters.
The Fend ai Vex were Lesser shadows of their Ket Lords. A people that had been created, and bred specifically by the Ket; the Fend were even more warlike, more violent than their Makers had been. Using their mastery of the Jhexadrin syn Harm, the Ket forged dark magicks to create a warrior race, a race that would serve the Ket unquestioningly.
But the Fend possessed fighting skills that in time, would have made them a threat even to the mighty Emen themselves. Bred with demonic speed and strength, the Fend ai Vex were the product of a Ket thaumaturge named SeenPel'Ivid.
SeenPel, desiring favor among the defeated leadership of the Ket, devised a scheme to create the perfect weapon to use against their equally exhausted Emen foes.
A scientist and Scholar, SeenPel employed a plan combining sorcery, science and metaphysics. Then he caused one hundred members of an enslaved local populace known as the shuke to be brought before him.
The shuke were primitives, savages descended from a primate native to Firstworld. They possessed none of the mental powers of the Yloi. Easily enslaved, to be used as the Ket saw fit, the shuke were a simple people. They lived in the very shadow of Keer Vax Sazen, the Ket City of Might. And they were easily susceptible to the mental domination wielded by a "superior" mind. As such, they were the ideal subjects for the experiment that SeenPel'Ivid envisioned.
The terrified shuke were bound. And one by one, each shuke was tortured, made to experience unrelenting anguish before finally being murdered, as SeenPel'Ivid looked on with great interest. Then, when the bodies of the strongest shuke, fourteen in all, were laid out before SeenPel, he summoned great magicks.
Unseen energies whirled around the murdered shuke, entering them in a great rush of dark force. These fourteen had proven the most resilient of the one hundred captured primitives before their deaths.
SeenPel'Ivid sought just such strength.
The Ket Necromancer spoke words of power over the mutilated bodies, words that trapped the alien energies within the forms of the primitives.
Then SeenPel was forced to wait for one hundred years as his spell gained the momentum required to advance. In that time, the bodies of the shuke did not age or deteriorate. They had been preserved, wrapped in strange poultices that SeenPel had discovered in his journey along the Dark Path.
For much of that time SeenPel'Ivid vanished from the Great Society of the Ket, as he meditated, summoning forth even greater magicks to serve him. But a century was as a year to the long lived Ket. Unperturbed by the passage of time, he sat in his domain and gathered darkness and power to himself.
Finally, SeenPel's second phase was ready. Grasping a sharp, magically enhanced blade, SeenPel plunged it into his own beating heart. His blood flowed out, covering the bodies of the shuke like a crimson flood. But he was Yloi and he did not die. His blood was absorbed by the poultices, which covered the shuke where they lay. Instantly, the blood was borne into the open wounds inflicted by SeenPel's Tormentors. In moments the blood was totally consumed.
SeenPel then intoned a necromancer's spell intended to raise the spirits of the dead. And the murdered shuke opened their eyes. And when SeenPel commanded them to rise, they obeyed.
Then SeenPel studied his handiwork. And he was well pleased. For the bodies of the shuke had been infused with some small portion of his own Ket strength. The dark force which had filled the shuke a century before now shone forth from their eyes.
SeenPel had called forth the spirits of his own ancestors, the primordial Asa, to inhabit these undead forms. The Asa, though less refined than the Yloi, nevertheless had been a mighty scourge in the distant past, vicious predators who had once ruled the wild planet in the wake of all Creation.
Using his mastery of the Jhexadren syn Harm, the Dark Mysteries, SeenPel Ivid mastered these wild spirits, called Haxes, and placed them within the violated bodies of the innocent primitives.
The bodies of the shuke had already begun the transformation that would one day make them a House in their own right. Whereas before, the shuke had been a small, lightly built people, now, under the compulsion of SeenPel's power, the fourteen began to grow, their bodies stretching to nearly twice their original height.
The dark knowledge held within SeenPel'Ivid's blood worked other changes upon the shuke. Where they had been slight of build, wiry muscle now filled out the limbs and bodies of the primitives. SeenPel's power had created creatures whose existence straddled the realm of the living and the Beyond Planes. Thus the laws of life and death were held in abeyance before this ghoulish experiment.
And even as the displaced spirits of the shuke decried SeenPel, naming him a Ravager of Innocents, the blasphemous process continued. When the new creatures stood at last before their Maker, they obeyed his commands, displaying speed and agility that made him shine with dark pleasure. The savage strength of the ancients was in their limbs.
To test their worthiness, SeenPel'Ivid ordered two of the shuke to destroy a number of his own Tormentors, the powerful warrior/slaves who had visited horror upon them in their previous incarnation. The two slaughtered twenty armed warriors before SeenPel recalled them.
Tall they were, and pale as gray spirits. Cruel teeth, sharp like those of beasts lined their black- lipped mouths. A spirit of fury burned in black and silver eyes that held no whites, but only midnight depths. Their once crude faces glowed with a strange, dark beauty.
The power of the Asa was now SeenPel's to command, combined with the potential of his own Ket heritage and that of the Jahexadren Syn Harm. But SeenPel hadn't accounted for the fury of the shuke, and their thirst for vengeance for the wrongs done them. When SeenPel'Ivid approached the Hamath-im, leaders of the Ket, full of pride and glowing with his own triumph, the leaders celebrated his creations. They lauded the creatures that would enable them to intensify their coming attack upon the Emen. A great celebration was proclaimed. Sacrifices would be performed to mark their victory.
But at the height of the celebration, as SeenPel and the fourteen were honored by the Ket, a great darkness descended upon them. With an anguished cry, the spirits of the murdered shuke appeared before the gathering.
Their appearance frightened even these practitioners of the Dark Way, so fell was their anger, so dreadful were they in their wrath. When the spirits of the shuke saw what had been done to their former bodies, they shrieked in outrage.
None among the Ket were able to drive the haxes from the gathering. And as one, they attacked the bodies they'd once inhabited. Great gashes and tears opened in the skin of the fourteen Asa. And even they were unable to prevent what happened next.
With a terrible, rending howl, the shuke spirits plunged back into the bodies of the fourteen. Then there was a great howling as the fourteen tore themselves trying to rip out the shuke even as they struggled to evict the Asa from their altered bodies. Finally, the fourteen fell to the floor of the gathering place.
All was silent for a time. Then, ten of the fourteen stood once more. They appeared unchanged as they stared through silver/ obsidian eyes at the assembled Ket. One of the ten stepped forward and addressed SeenPel'Ivid where he stood near the place of high honor.
"You have been named a Ravager of Innocents. A bhaxaze, in the deep tongue of the shuke." The speaker spat as the hated name passed his bloodied lips. "You who have wrought this abomination; know that you have wrought in vain. For we are yet the shuke who were removed from our lives as a pebble worm is removed from its shell. We remain shuke."
The speaker looked around. His contempt for his former Masters was evident in his pale features as he continued.
"And yet we are shuke no longer. For the spirits of your cursed progenitors remain."
This statement caused great offense among the arrogant Ket. But none lifted mind or weapon against the grim speaker.
"But we are the masters of our souls, even as we were in life, the lives you stole from us. Though we are less than you, still are we greater. We are The Fend ai Vex. The Sword of Oblivion. And we place upon this House a doom that none shall escape nor forestall. You shall have none of the gain you sought from our destruction. Instead this blasphemous union of our peoples shall bring only woe upon the House of Ket. For one day, the slaves shall ascend to a place of Power that even the Masters will fail to achieve: We shall live on as Keer Vax Sazen falls into Silence."
There was a shock of outrage in the gathering place. Several thaumaturges hurled mighty blasts of darkness at the ten beings before them. But the ten were untouched by the assault. They stood, resolute and untouched as the Ket assailed them on all sides. All weapons fell before they could strike these Fend ai Vex. No power or force could so much as graze their bodies.
Finally exhausted, the Ket relented. The speaker smirked as he spoke once more.
"We are the future. Your End has been decreed by forces vaster by far than the shuke."
The speaker turned again to SeenPel.
"Your efforts to bring forth victory over your enemy has instead alerted Others to your presence. You have overreached."
SeenPel paled as he heard the doom pronounced by the shuke. His head shook back and forth as the speaker pointed a clawed finger at him.
"You have brought this doom upon the heads of your own House. In time, one of your own will secure your fates with the darkest treachery."
There was a great rumbling then. And SeenPel, indeed all the assembled Ket screamed as the skies above Keer Vax Sazen opened wide. With a violent flash and a sound like thunder, the Ten vanished.
And when the Ket searched the gathering place for SeenPel, he too was nowhere in sight. He had been spirited away by the Ten to a fate that no one present would ever know.
The Fend ai Vex were not seen again for a thousand years.
It was during this time that the Crile gained near ascendancy over the planet. But ultimately, the Emen would return, renewed, stronger than ever, a tale that is recounted elsewhere in our histories. They reclaimed mastery from the Crile, who still were not their equals.
The Middle Epoch passed as the Emen and the Ket renewed their ancient struggle. But a thousand years later, the Fend ai Vex appeared in the Farhulti Wastes, the great barren desert in the southern hemisphere of Firstworld.
No one, even the Emen themselves had foreseen their return. And when an Envoy from the Fend ai Vex appeared without warning in the Hamathii Say Morn of the Ket, there was great concern.
The numbers of the vanished Fend had grown. There were now nearly enough of them to constitute their own Caste-House. More than fifty- thousand Fend now strode the southern Wastes of Firstworld.
But curiously, the Fend Envoy presented themselves to the new leadership of the House of Ket, not with promises of vengeance, but of fealty. They would serve the Ket in good faith, they pledged, asking in return only that the Ket allow them to live unmolested in the desolate Farhulti Wastes.
Many of the once proud Ket were wary of these pale newcomers. The Ket well remembered the first appearance of the Fend, and the doom spoken upon them by the shuke a thousand years earlier. They howled for the blood of the strangers before they could bring the doom foretold so long ago down upon their heads.
But in truth, the Ket had yet to fully recover from the centuries of warring with the hated Emen. The Emen had recovered their resources with a swiftness that the Ket had been unable to match. The Ket lacked the unity, the single-minded dedication to their shared survival which had characterized the Emen's struggles for power. In many ways the House of Ket was at war with itself.
And the other Castes; Soma, Laldo, and Eitrin, though still less powerful than the Ket, had nevertheless become a threat in their own right.
The upstart Crile had drawn an alliance with the Emen, forming a powerful union. The Crile shared their knowledge and insights with the Emen, while in return, the Emen provided some measure of protection from the other, more aggressive Houses. This potent joining had forced the more disorganized Ket into the position of beleaguered also rans, teetering on the verge of dissolution, potential targets of absorption by one of the other Lesser Castes.
And the new Hamathii Say Morn of the Ket were desperate for another reason as well: Crile Caste Scholars recently had discovered a way to reshape planets to suit the Yloi.
With the aid of the Emen, the Crile had unlocked the secret of reforming Reave planets all throughout the "Weave," the material that made up the fabric of reality itself. Even as the Fend were making themselves known to the Ket, Emen and Crile Scholars were consolidating this newfound ability, an ability that would allow the Emen to truly master worlds.
The Hamathii Say Morn sought a tentative agreement with the leaders of the Fend ai Vex; Aid the Ket in the ongoing war against the Emen (and their allies the Crile) and the recognized House of Fend ai Vex would be allowed to share in the spoils of war. Fend consented, and a treaty was agreed upon.
Thus was begun the period known as The Age of War.
(End Translation)
*****
CHAPTER 37 (INTERLUDE)
In a luminous place that is no-place, yet everywhere at once, outside time, part of all moments past and present, the Survivors of a once great House engage in a philosophical debate, a debate that holds the fate of worlds in the balance:
"Tolle Thodus, you are weary. Your aeolnir betrays you."
"Yes, brother. I sincerely believed our kind had evolved beyond the need for rest or surcease, even before the Ascension. I was mistaken."
"You have been humbled then, by your trials?"
"Yes, brother. Since the Escape, we have lived as beings of pure thought, free of the need for our once-forms. Our minds have become so powerful that we have no need for the flesh."
"Yes, Paladin. We have achieved a form of omniscience undreamed of by our most powerful Visionaries. But while we dwell here, upon this plane, we are mortal once more, and subject to its laws." "Yes, sister. Such a state is... taxing for me."
"Understandable, Paladin. We have existed in the heart of a star to observe its living soul at close vantage. A return to flesh is ...disconcerting"
"But such is the nature of our mission, sister. He is the Paladin."
"Yes, brother. The Envoy may lend support in your struggle, Thodus, but no more. We have another role to play."
"I know, sister. I sought merely to gain your understanding."
"You question the wisdom of the Envoy?"
"No, brother. I chose this course with great anticipation. I longed to see what had become of our Children, and to study that plane from which we Ascended. But when we fled the doom brought by the Chaos Bringer, I failed to imagine that I might come to miss our native dimension, and the Children we left behind.
"Having Ascended beyond the power to affect events upon that realm, we have become little more than half-remembered observers, tales with which to caution the heady and over- ambitious among our descendants.
I find this state surprisingly...frustrating, brother."
"Ahhh, but there are those among our people who believe that our time as rulers of worlds has passed, Thodus. That it is better to let the Children rule or be ruled, as fate would order."
"The dissenters believe it a part of the natural order. That all sentients must pass into time and history even as we did once. Paladin, though we have taken your side in this issue, accompanied you as part of the Envoy, I understand this belief."
"Pah! They are fools, my siblings. The dissenters would allow the Peerless Empire to crumble, and with it the very fabric of Order in the multiverse! I am unwilling to permit such a thing to be."
"But you are flesh. Even such flesh as we Yloi now bear. Ware that you do not become servant to the fires of that flesh, Thodus Axig. A whole realm of undiscovered potential exists for us upon the Ascended Plane."
"Is that not enough to divert your restless mind? Indeed even the minds of all the Ascended?"
"Ahhh, It is an old debate, brothers, sisters, one that has raged among we Survivors for ages. The outcome of this Envoy will determine who was right, I suppose."
"You dissemble, Paladin."
"Forgive me, brother. I am weary as you have said."
"A word of advice, Paladin."
"Yes, brother."
"Beware also, that your affinity for the flesh and for that plane from which we Ascended, not lead you into ruin and darkness. Our cousin, that One who is not named, was led astray even from the Ket, who were strong, as we were strong."
"My thanks, brother."
"And, there are those things which even the Ascended Ones may not name or challenge. The Gaunt-servant believes he has been abandoned. He is incorrect in this."
"You are wise, sister. You fulfill the promise of our Envoy in this place. Your wisdom humbles me."
"That is good, Paladin. Guard well the seed of humility. We stand within the shadow of peril if you fail."
*
The debate was an old one. It had begun soon after the Escape. And it raged for millennia. Finally, Tolle Thodus Axig Y Emen, he who would become the Paladin, along with like- minded Survivors, convinced the others to allow a small Envoy to return to the plane of their birth.
They had foreseen that a very real need for their intervention would soon make itself apparent. For a great imbalance had been set in motion, an imbalance that would soon embroil all of their descendants in a Great War the likes of which the Survivors could not conceive.
It was foreseen that the Chaos Bringer would one-day return. He whose name and image had been stricken from the minds and histories of the Yloi by the Paladin and his brethren in the days before the Escape. That One remained trapped in his shadow prison, somewhere upon the plane they had left behind.
In that dim and distant time, the Paladin and his brethren had ruled thousands of worlds; The Peerless Empire of the mighty Yloi. As the Shenzi Say Ulorin of the House of Emen, the Paladin and his peers wielded nearly supreme power even then.
But the Bringer had dragged them all down to ruin, even destroying his own House in the process. And as the Survivors had foreseen, the events that would lead to the Bringer's return had indeed come to pass. He would reappear, with that same dark might, to bring the Peerless Empire and all its mighty works to ruination.
Surely, Thodus Axig, then Versicant of the Lawbody argued, this was just cause for action? The Bringer had bargained for power with an alien race that dwelled several dimensions above the one the Survivors inhabited even now. That power prevented the Survivors from pursuing the Bringer, Silencing him for the good of all. How could their descendants hope to thwart him when the Emen themselves had been unable to resist?
The need for an intervention was agreed upon.
But the dissenters would insist upon limited interference. The Envoy would work through agents, disdaining to actually descend from their contemplations to return to the realm of their birth.
And for all their power, the Survivors were still wary of drawing the notice of the Gaunt, the race that had bequeathed Varult Onsua his dark power in exchange for the destruction of the ruling Houses of the Yloi.
The Survivors had no wish to incur the wrath of such beings. Not until more about their dark nature could be ascertained.
Finally, when a course of action had been formulated, one that would allow their Children to act without perceived interference, a Paladin was chosen to implement the plan.
The plan was a simple one: Place agents in strategic positions, manipulate events to covertly counter the machinations of the Gaunt-servant. And when all was ready and the inevitable Reaving begun, remove the fulcrum of the Fend's attack: The Horn.
The appointed Paladin had stolen the mekhaud- cith soon after its first stage had been deployed in Earth's atmosphere. He had been unable to halt its operations immediately. Though he possessed great power even in his Descended form, still it had taken time to build enough will to rest control of the Horn away from the Nagrath Say Morn.
It was a delicate thing, this theft.
In order to steal the Horn, the Paladin had to employ his Art in a way that left the Nagrath Say Morn in ignorance long enough to subvert its power to his will.
The loss of the Horn set the Fend invasion back considerably, seriously hampering the war effort on every level from infrastructure to personnel interaction. Their resources would be largely handicapped without the Horn to reform the life-force of the planet and its people.
Admittedly, it was a stopgap measure. The Fend had the vast resources of half the Peerless Empire at their command. Inevitably, they would simply send a second Herald to Earth and begin again where the first one had failed.
But such a maneuver would take time, even for the Fend. The first Herald had taken five Earth years to reach the planet following its initial discovery. Having been subjected to considerable alterations already, the Earth was slowly being transformed for the benefit of the Yloi. But without the Horn to complete the task, it would be several years before the Fend could truly master the planet.
And the Paladin had set other plans in motion.
He knew that the Earth's animate aura would naturally fight back, exert its own life- force to repel the alien invaders. With the Horn, and his help, the Earth would stand a fighting chance against the Fend.
But there was still the question of the Bringer.
The Paladin had acted to thwart Varult Onsua Ashendai, now called Pitch, at every turn. The loss of the Horn would also limit the Bringer's power on this plane.
But the Bringer was searching for the Horn as well. And his efforts to find it brought him ever closer to the Paladin. He was running out of time.
He had spent centuries setting the pieces in place, arranging events, coordinating entire human lives. He'd used his power to manipulate what many humans believed were their destinies...
But his primary agent must find him soon. If she failed, all the Paladin's plans would end in ruin. This new world and countless others would fall beneath the heel of the Betrayer of Kin.
But outside of his occasional Visitations, his forays into his agent's dreaming consciousness, he could do little to guide her. The Paladin had utilized his flagging Art to conceal the Horn, moving it in and out of this reality, constantly shifting their position in space-time so that the Fend and the Bringer were unable to pinpoint them.
But his time here was drawing to its end. It took all his power to keep his location hidden from his enemies. He could spare nothing more to aid his agent. The Paladin's power was taxed to the limit. And his influence must not draw the attention of Varult Onsua Ashendai.
Or of those he served.
*****