"You really have to be joking. You cannot be at all serious about this."
"But we are serious, Sir Knight. We have no choice but to be serious. People are dying..."
"That is to be expected. This is Teshiwahur and these are the times of the Long Death. Someone is always dying."
"But a war is coming, a great and awful war unlike any we've ever seen on this world and we are not prepared to fight it. It will destroy what remains of this once proud planet..."
"Before the Great Revocation forced the mighty Emperium to withdraw its tyrannical empire away from the expanses of interplanetary space, this 'once proud planet' had at one time held the populations of two other planets and five mega-asteroid colonies firmly in the iron bonds of slavery. Don't our rewrite history to me, buccaneer, because I was there when it happened. I saw what crimes we committed against Others unfortunate enough to have encountered the greed and power of The World-Father's ambitions."
Vandessha'Jai stood uncomfortably in the silence following his introduction to the somber armored paladin named D'Spayr. The nomadic former monk, Lumynn, had presented Jai and his shipmate, Geh'wan Shryke, to the Knight after they'd covertly rendezvoused outside the bustling bazaar across the metropolis. D'Spayr had straightaway given them the impression he hadn't wanted anything to do with their subterfuge. Their presence obviously presented a set of possible complications regarding his own status as a new citizen to The City with which he had not wanted to deal. Vandessha'Jai could tell that, although the Knight obviously trusted his friends, he did not by default extend that trust to either himself or to Geh'wan Shryke.
For her part, the imposing warrior-woman, Nygeia, whom Jai suspected was descended from or had once been a member of the titled aristocracy, had interceded during the brief introductions and tried to engage D'Spayr's rebellious anti-establishment leanings, but the solemn chevalier had not responded beyond a reluctant agreement to dispassionately listen to Jai and Shryke's story.
It was the man's eyes, the renegade ex-Ymperatur's Navy officer decided. D'SPayr had cold, intelligent eyes that immediately weighed and assessed the strength and value of anyone they beheld. The intensity of his gaze seemed to penetrate past the masks of professional rank or social convention. When you met him, it felt as if he were somehow, in some strange way, sitting in judgment of you.
It was like he could see a person's sins. That was not a thought Vandessha'Jai wanted to entertain. His own personal history was painted a deep, wet red with the aftermath and consequences from his sins. He felt uncomfortable with D'Spayr knowing anything about his past.
Outside, in the fading light of day...
*** The six of them gathered in silence, alien to the world through which they moved, yet comfortable with the basic and unchanging mechanical predictability -- and inevitability -- of their mission. It was ever so. They had assembled as a team at the command of a power far older even than they themselves. For nearly a millennium, they had worked together, in concert, like the fingers of a single mighty fist wielded by the unimaginable will of the Dire Lords of Darkness Eternal. They had seen the rise and fall of many proud civilizations, of many fearsome and powerful empires, and whenever the Cosmic Balance was at risk of tipping against the warring entropic forces that bound the various elements of the Multiverse together, they were resurrected, empowered and then unleashed against that which threatened the Balance.
They were the children of a being known to humankind only as "The Woman" and, as such, they served enigmatic beings called 'The Arbiters' who were counted among the roster of the Dire Lords of Darkness Eternal. The six were soldiers of the Arbiters and they were called "the Instrumentality of the Constant".
And today, they had been dispatched to this struggling, hardscrabble metropolis on Teshiwahur built atop the ruins of an ancient place called "Niyaddour". Today, they had been sent to The City... ***
The group had met inside the main chambers of a debris-strewn, dusty courthouse sitting unused at the rear of Kolag Y'phree's Municipal Services building, some five blocks away from his fortress-citadel sitting just west and north of The City's geographic center. The two-story building was an A-frame shape with a squared, single-story rear chamber abutted to its main body. Its interior still bore the decorative evidence of its former official use as a site for judicial legislating and there were a cluster of overturned, broken chairs strewn about the rail-enclosed jury box. On the cracked wall behind the raised judge's bench, the Great Seal of the Territorial Jurisdiction and the flags of the Emperium and its municipal confederated governments was partially covered in graffiti and some dried and crusted organic garbage. The shadow-dappled chamber was dimly illuminated by the light from a ceiling-mounted bank of incendiary gas tubules. Apparently, the power had not yet been completely cut-off to the building, even though there was power rationing in effect in certain sections of The City. Outside, a few motorized carts still operating with internal combustion engines passed strolling passersby along the cracked and pitted streets running perpendicular to the building. A trio of visiting low-level dignitaries taking an impromptu tour of The City rode by on miniature Leeshiwunnem, domesticated animals resembling hybrids of camels and buffalos with alligator-like reptile features, bred-down genetically to a smaller size so as to become transport animals. The area was mostly unpopulated which made it a prime location for a secret gathering.
The tragedy of the abandonment and decay of this tract of cityscape was that this was once the site of grand and important history for the people of The City. After wresting its fortunes away from being bound by its twisted, dark and sinister past as dread Niyaddour, The City had for a time been haven to an influx of human and non-human refugees, outcast survivors from the Okphalantene Advocation.
Driven by public religious hysteria following the appearance of The Wound in Teshiwahur's solar system, the Okphalantene Advocation was a religious Holy War wherein the leading spiritual caste in Teshiwahurian culture, the Okphalan Ke'Huery collectively took upon itself the mission to cleanse the Withered Land of all traces of non-native alien spirituality that had been spawned in Teshiwahurian culture since the Emperium had expanded across outer space and met with non-human alien lifeforms. The "unclean" alien heretics, whom the Okphalans largely considered to be soulless creatures, were physically driven past the edges of the Forever Plain and into the interior of the sprawling, now-nameless fortress-city where they saw a small measure of acceptance and recognition as "normal". And although the Okphalans forcibly sought to enforce their short-sighted vision of Teshiwahurian purity and piety upon The City's human population, the educated and metropolitan, urbane citizenry fought back, on and off the battle fields, eventually winning the day for tolerance and religious acceptance. The decrepit courthouse and grounds where D'Spayr and his companions now rendezvoused was the site of The City's great and historic legislative victory over the Okphalans, allowing the non-human aliens to worship their own celestial beings and deities within its towering walls.
But The City was destined to only be an oasis for such libertarian politics, inasmuch the crushing power and influence of the reactionary Okphalantene Advocation pushed past the metropolis' borders, taking their evangelical crusade far out to the Pang Xa'Omathra region and, ultimately, to the shores of the Pnahrryian Sea.
Two generations later, the district and the courthouse were allowed to fall into disrepair and ruin as more basic human needs and inadequacies took precedence over the grandeur and heroism of the Past.
*** The six emerged suddenly from within the Flashstream, that perpetually vibrating macrocosmic membrane separating dimensional Planes of Quantum Existence, at the edges of the oceanic Time/Space vastness of the Ventriculum, and found themselves suspended outside gravity, overlooking a dilapidated building on the corner of a semi-deserted street in a grubby, run-down section of The City. The Instrumentality of the Constant had reached their destination. They were close to achieving The Objective.
They had, in this Consecration, served will of The Arbiters for over fifteen standard galactic solar orbits, but they did not measure or record Time as did normal organic beings. The Instrumentality of the Constant existed as a group consciousness within the boundaries of no less than fifty simultaneous multidimensional Realities, ever watchful, always vigilant, always prepared, ever loyal. Since the beginnings of the Predomination of The Arbiters within the quantum spatial manifolds of the Hegemony of the Ventriculum, the Instrumentality had been birthed and rebirthed in cycles called 'consecrations' and each consecration was identified by a particular mission, by a circumstance and a task that had defined their purpose as The Woman's devoted spawn.
Sometimes they were only nightmarish shadows haunting the edges of Lucid Knowledge, haunting the periphery of vision, edging their prey towards Madness, other times they were a cancerous disease infecting the waking mind of a king, queen or an emperor leading their civilization towards the next stage of cultural evolution. But mostly, they were a silent and invisible hammer, the bludgeon of an alien tyranny pounding unexpectedly across the breadth and width of Time and Space, striking without mercy.
This time, this consecration, they had been born and dispensed to exist as a mighty sword through which the Will of the Masters could be plunged into the heart of The Withered Land.
They could sense that their prey was close, just beyond the stone walls nearby... ***
"So, if I understand what it is you are proposing, you're inviting us to help you, a group of marauding freebooters who are essentially wanted outlaws, people we've never before met, fight a small, undeclared secret war against the same bloodthirsty warlord whom we encountered at the ruins of Quatedralle Zwarte over possession of a powerful, arcane something called the Laukenmass Lazulux," D'Spayr said, arms crossed across his broad chest.
"That's an extreme oversimplification of a very serious Life-and-Death situation, I assure you," Vandessha'Jai said, reacting petulantly at the disparaging tone underlying D'Spayr's words.
"I really don't give a damn about your assurances," D'Spayr said. "Though you were once soldiers and officers within the Emperium's military forces, much as I myself was, you're now a pirate. You rob and steal and kill, taking mercenary jobs for unsavory, amoral greedy people who want nothing more than to take whatever little remains of this dying world away from those unfortunate, powerless folk who have nowhere to turn for help. To hell with you."
"Finally, something I can agree with," Ryonne muttered venomously from her perch atop a sooty pile of stone rubble in a murky corner of the chamber. Her demeanor was headstrong and uncooperative. "These people are not trustworthy."
"Pretty high-handed talk coming from someone who is himself on payroll in the service of the warlord, Kolag Y'phree, as an enforcer of so-called 'law'. And that 'Law' determined by a militia-leader who is a turncoat who unlawfully conquered this city after the collapse of the Emperium's Council of Free Territories, here in the Outer Exclaves beyond the Forever Plain," Geh'wan Shryke interjected heatedly, addressing the Knight's comments.
"So to hell with you, Sir Knight, in return," Jai added with a sneer and a mocking bow.
"Nygeia. Lumynn," D'SPayr said, addressing his comrades after taking a moment to ponder Shryke's harsh words. "Why am I here listening to this? Don't we have enough trouble of our own to handle without adding more to it?"
Lumynn briefly looked over to Nygeia to see if she would take the lead in providing the Knight with an explanation that might meet his satisfaction, but he was surprised to see that the warrior-sorceress was staring off into the distance, deeply preoccupied by something beyond Lumynn's perception.
"Nygeia? Princess?" the former monk prompted.
She didn't answer. Instead she began to slowly walk dreamily across the littered floor towards one of the chamber's far walls. She sensed something...
The contentious mood within the chamber changed, poisoned by a dark anxiety.
D'Spayr tilted his head, as if listening for some barely discernible sound, and slowly drew his twin-bladed shatter-sword from its scabbard.
"We're not alone," he intoned grimly as he rose into a combat stance.
And then Reality blinked...
They appeared quietly in a falling cascade of sparkling, starry embers, a shower of electronic sparks, that dropped from the air in the space between the high gallery ceiling above the heads of D'Spayr's group. Six vaguely humanoid shapes materialized from the dim, impure atmosphere, each half again as tall as the tallest of normal human men. Though they were draped in billowing, voluminous capes made from some purplish-gray velvet material, it was clear that the forbidding sextet were anything but traditionally human --- and anything but friendly..., perhaps it was in the way the chamber's dim light reflected from off the smooth contours of their sectioned and subdivided, organic metal bodies.
Or maybe it was in the wicked gleam that came from off the hard, multi-faceted surface of each metal warrior's single, cold, cyclopean eye.
And, of course, the long, twin-bladed war axe each of them carried in their taloned, three-fingered grip only made their air of implied menace even more undeniable.
"We are The Instrumentality. You have been designated as enemies of The Arbiters. Accept your deaths now and they will be quick. Resistance will only prolong your agony," the centermost metallic warrior in their battle formation said.
Unhesitatingly, D'Spayr lunged across the room at the creature, his shatter-sword raised, raw energy crackling from off its twin, razor-keen blades.
* * *