A small crowd of people, most of whom had traveled from neighboring district communities called 'adjacencies', had gathered at the edges of the rubble-strewn battlezone and they watched with solemn attentiveness. They pointed and muttered darkly, eyes flitting back and forth between the arrival of police and emergency responders and then casting hard glances towards the strangers in armored uniforms who stood near the center of the devastated area. They did not like what they were seeing... The aftermath of more violence, more destructiveness. They looked upon yet more madness visiting tragedy on their city.
They were not happy.
A very aggravated Kolag Y'phree had arrived at the location of the battle with a team of forensic engineers and scientists in tow. He'd stared in silent disbelief at the damage done to the already ravaged buildings in the area as he listened to both Adam Wilder and D'Spayr's reports on what had transpired. Eleven bystanders had been injured, five of them seriously, but luckily no one had been killed. Y'phree was caught seriously off-guard by the assault, unprepared for questions from his own urban crisis security forces about terrorist activity from the revolutionary underground. He gathered his management officials and then verbally berated the quintet of district police constables assigned street-level patrol of the decaying industrial area and he unceremoniously demoted the municipal precinct captain of the tiny police security force. The flustered and discomposed Warlord then slowly and carefully walked the forensic grid laid out on-scene with his scientists and engineers while he digested the information he'd been given.
"These weren't mercenaries nor were they some nomadic, unaffiliated band of outlaws. This was an incursion," he said aloud after many minutes had passed. "An incursion. A probe of our defenses. A precursor to an invasion. This was a test of our security preparedness and our protective capabilities. Someone somewhere is looking at The City and they are seriously thinking of taking it for their own."
"Perhaps," D'Spayr said, doubt coloring his tone. He stepped away from his companions and walked nearer The City's de facto post-Wound ruler. Meanwhile, Lumynn had, amid the confusion following the arrival of Y'phree's urban response forces, taken the opportunity to hastily spirit away Vandessha'Jai and Geh'wan Shryke to the dingy and sunless interior of a nearby ramshackle streetside café. He and Nygeia had agreed that it was probably not a good idea to introduce the Peravendathian privateers to the Warlord or his security forces.
The Warlord peered at him askance. "What do you mean?"
"Are you sure you want to hear this?"
Y'phree growled deep in his wide chest. "Just get to the point. I have precious little patience for this as it is."
"They weren't after your precious City. Why would they be? Planetary real estate has no meaning to them and neither does territorial politics on our dying backwater planet of deserts and storms. These were Otherworlders, true alien beings from outside this solar system, likely from outside ANY solar system we know of. They're trying to cover their presence amongst us. They were after individuals who have knowledge that they are here. They were trying to kill these messengers before their message could be delivered to anyone who would listen."
"From the Upworlds?" Y'phree asked, frowning.
D'Spayr shook his head negatively. "From another universe. From the other side of The Wound itself."
Kolag Y'phree noisily blew a thick stream of air from between his pursed lips and then cast his eyes to the ground. He didn't deride or laugh at D'Spayr's hypothesis. He didn't immediately attempt denying its validity. His reaction was actually what D'Spayr had been looking for...
The man wasn't at all surprised. The Warlord knew far more about this series of events than he was telling anyone.
"An interesting theory, but not much to support it at this time, wouldn't you say? And if it were true, then why here, in this place? I mean, look around you... Surely it would not have been chosen for any strategic military value. Besides, Sir Knight, what was it exactly that you, your lovely Princess-friend and the Traveler, were doing here?"
"Doing? Other than being targets, not much. Perhaps these Offworld invaders are a splinter group from the ranks of the Dread Xaozyeum," D'Spayr suggested, slyly redirecting Y'phree's attention from the impromptu gathering of the Knight and his associates away from the grounds of the Warlord's fortress sanctum. He used just enough of the actual truth to give his fictional misdirection the ring of authenticity. "Even though the Emperium long ago broke off all lawful diplomatic contact with them, beginning just after the end of the Great Revocation, we know that the alien upstarts have still maintained surreptitious and covert associations with the more militant anti-Emperium rebel groups here on Teshiwahur."
The Warlord stared askance at the Knight, one eyebrow raised quizzically, and he blinked several times rapidly, as he tried to process what D'Spayr had said.
"That's not possible, they were never real. Smoke and whispers, legendry, the stuff of paranoid nightmares. The height of that mythology is from many, many heliars past, from the days of my youth. There was never any historical proof such an organization ever existed," he said.
"They were real and they exist still," D'Spayr countered. "I know this for a fact. I have buried more than a few comrades who fell prey to their schemes. And no doubt you've heard the tale of the township of Meervandahl, on the outer edges of the Pang Xa'Omathra region... Nineteen hundred men, women and children cut down in a single night by relentless metal monsters, man-like automatons, the like of which no one had ever before seen."
"Meervandahl was buried in the Great Saltation Wave in Orbital Heliar 112, Post-Wound, following the First Continental Reconstruction," Y'phree recited. "It was officially declared a natural disaster by the Emperium's Scientific Ministry of Anomalous Calamities. It was a dust storm of enormous magnitude that destroyed the township, nothing more."
"Really? Has anyone truly believed that?" D'Spayr challenged. "Wasn't Meervandahl the seat of the old Extraplanetary Jurisprudence Magistracy following the Great Revocation? And didn't the Extraplanetary Magistracy investigate and outlaw the Dread Xaoszyeum, officially declaring it a threat to Emperium hegemonic security? The Pang Xa'Omathra region, and its sister territories up to the Peravendath coast, has always been a place where lawlessness, sedition and revolt have blossomed."
"Well, yes, but The Xaozyeum? Gods and Devils, I haven't heard mention of them to be an active agency of revolt in nearly a handful of full solar heliars," Y'phree said. "Last I knew, there was still a fat bounty on any information leading to the capture or killing of any member of the Xaozyeum. Even now, nearly six orbital heliars past his Reigning Primacy, the World-Father, His Imperialness Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh, would be most interested in hearing any mention of those bloody-handed, barbaric Chaos-dogs. I stand corrected, Sir Knight, there may be a handle on this mess that we can use to our own advantage. So you think perhaps members of the rebel forces may have intended a rendezvous with those mutated hive-mind scum within our city's limits..."
"It would not be an impossibility," D'Spayr said, careful not to overplay his hand.
"I will bring the Grand Vizier in on this at the earliest opportunity," Y'phree stated purposefully. "Of all here in The City, Karliandras Dru'ell will be best able to assess whether or not there is Offworld influence in some conspiratorial plot at work here."
"And?"
Y'phree's countenance wrinkled into a grim mask of determination. "And so, to protect The City from any further threat of menacing alien incursion, I do believe it's time for us to actively perform our own investigation. We can't wait for the District Protectorate Services or the Territorial Security Magistrates to do their bureaucratic back-and-forth with what remains of the Emperium's ineffectual Central Homefront Security bureau. Besides, the Council of Free Territories has never trusted the Central Homefront."
"Perhaps you'd want me to organize an Away Force? Maybe take that force outside the walls of The City and travel to Peravendath, following any leads that may exist to the origins of these metal assassins or their links to the Dread Xaozyeum?"
"I think that is a sound idea," Y'phree said. "Consult with the Traveler. He and his companion, Ryonne, are most familiar with my rules and procedures for such an enterprise."
Then, shaking his leonine head as he mulled over his thoughts, Kolag Y'phree lumbered away from the Knight, walking over to meet with his city advisors who'd gathered near a cracked and worn pedestrian promenade adjacent to the ruined courthouse.
"Well, that was certainly educational," Nygeia said from over D'Spayr's shoulder, briefly startling the Knight. There was a cutting tone of disapproval underlying her words. "Cunning and manipulative were not words I would previously have used to describe your interactions with figures in authority."
"What?"
"The Dread Xaozyeum? Meervandahl? Seriously? No one has heard anything but whispered conspiratorial rumors about them for many, many solar heliars --- and for good reason. The Emperium's Interior Anti-Sedition Intelligence Ministry rooted out the last of those cultish terrorists and hanged them probably before Kolag Y'phree had sprouted his first permanent teeth. They are nothing more than ghosts and goblins populating paranoid fantasies."
"So you say, Princess."
"You say otherwise?"
"I KNOW otherwise. I was there when their villainy was at its peak. I hunted them. I fought them."
"And now?" Nygeia stubbornly pressed her point, refusing to let the subject drop.
"Their mythology and legend could yet prove useful in this situation," the Knight answered nonchalantly.
"How? The Warlord is not a stupid man. We run the risk of this blowing up in our faces..."
"One learns what one needs to know, and uses the tools experience and tragedy have given them, in the course of surviving in a dying land where brutish kings, mad tyrants and paranoid warlords hold sway," the Knight said. "I did what I needed to do to move us along to the next step."
"Perhaps. And perhaps, too, you just may have begun to lead us down a dark path to blood and horror."
"Blood and horror," D'Spayr repeated, his manner fatalistic and curt. "This is the Withered Land, is it not? Isn't that normal for people like ourselves?"
Nygeia sighed. "You begin to worry me, my friend. I know you believe we've spent too long here in The City, that you do not approve of Kolag Y'phree , and I cannot fault the pedigree of your moral stance. Accepting the lesser of several evils is, nonetheless, still being accepting of evil. But we cannot continue to wander the continent aimlessly. If we want to make some kind of positive impact on our land, we need to make a stand someplace, somewhere. It is up to us to hold the line against the encroaching darkness. Despite the weight and the pain of mistakes and sorrows in our own pasts, we have become the soldiers of Hope. Us. We misfits. Though our world seems dark, there has to be a ray of starshine somewhere in your worldview."
D'Spayr drew a deep breath and released it slowly before answering the princess. "You are, of course, right, dear Nygeia. But you're going to have to forgive me if I place the bulk of my trust in the sword in my hand and the guns on my hips. Starshine, though doubtlessly bright, can be perilously cold and sometimes all it reveals to you is the face of new enemies."
* * *
"What in the world have you gotten us into?" Staring daggers at Vandessha'Jai, Lumynn hissed angrily through clenched teeth across the pitted and worn wooden table top. He leaned against the tall wooden table in the tavern, still in line of sight of the battlezone, diagonally a block down and across the wreckage littered street. His fist was tightly wrapped around the pommel of the short sword sheathed at his waist, even scabbarded, the weapon's mysterious blue metal gleamed with pale highlights.
In the dim light of the dingy alehouse and hostelry, over a dozen citizens of the rundown, hard-scrabble municipality had gathered at the wide dirty window at the tavern's northeastern wall where they watched Kolag Y'phree's forces pick through the rubble in the battle's aftermath.
"What kind of swine-dogs do you think we are? You know us better than that. We worked together as brethren once. Yes, we knew there was the probability that we were being trailed and hunted, but we weren't expecting those murderous things to pop out from the ether," the privateer answered hotly. "Those things were alive. They could think! Frankly, I don't think I've ever seen technology like that, not from my service in the Ymperatur's Peravendathian Navy, not when we were pursued by the Emperium's Badlands Criminal Retrieval Forces, not ever."
"That was Offworld Tekk, no doubt," Geh'wan Shryke muttered darkly. "There's little doubt that the Dragon has opened the door and invited alien trespass into our domain."
"The Dragon?" Lumynn repeated, blinking.
"Yes, The Dragon," Shryke said.
"Oh, Death-Gods of the Pit," Lumynn said as he squinted his eyes shut in an expression of anguish. "The damned Ometh-Nasteqians are involved, aren't they?"
"There are towers of howling fire raging in the black pits scarring the face of The Ke'Tareveel," Vandessha'Jai said. "Fires that have not been seen in three generations."
"War is coming and none of us can escape it," Shryke stated glumly. "Mark my words."
* * *
The booming roar of rushing water reverberated down the corridors leading to the chamber.
The Captain of his House Guard entered the chamber through the folding accordion door that expanded across a doorway carved into rock wide enough to accommodate the entrance of five normal human men. A dual series of towering pylons, ornately carved with images of heathen, barbaric gods, were the side-supports of six inflex arches central to the chamber, and they held sconces in which electrical flames flickered, distorting shadows as the flames lit the expansive room. The chamber was cool and dry, smelling ever so slightly of burnt metal, pepper oil, and animal musk. The Captain, a woman named "Ptoleria" from the distant, southern Senn-X'ienne archipelago, was astride a mover-disc that hissed a foot above the uneven cavern floor of the massive cave in which the palatial chamber was located. Ptoleria was dressed in dark violet-colored trauma armor, decorated with curling gold flourishes, over a form-hugging rubberized tunic that unintentionally showed off the contours of her long, lean musculature. As she drew nearer the high-backed throne chair at the chamber's center, that seat of sovereignty being three times as wide as any comparable human throne, she removed her bat-winged helmet. She was, as ever, deadly earnest in the execution of her duties and did not smile as she greeted him in the customary waist-bow with arm-sweep of the noble gentry, even though she knew him well.
They had been companions since childhood, back when she had been specially selected from the tamed domestic stock of the Incubatorium gene-factory and given to him.
This was the throne room of the High-Lord of the Saurotetramorphs, a hybrid reptile, bio-synthandroid mutant named "Zhe'kae-Chah", the Protector Imperious of the House of Zhe'tsan. Zhe'kae-Chah had been born the Protector Imperious via a dynastic heritage stretching back nearly three hundred Earth-years. He had attained the throne, called the "Kei-Qwah", after murdering his entire family, consisting of two brothers, a sister, and his mother, the dowager Yi'phei-Haeq, renowned as the "Scar Queen". Zhe'kae-Chah's father had been a brood-drone mutant from the bio-vat Incubatorium simply given the numeric designation, "17". The House of Zhe'tsan was atypical even among the reptilian humanoid society of the Saurotetramorphs; its brutish savagery was only matched by its wide-ranging, frighteningly cold intelligence and inexhaustible ambition.
"Zhe'tsan" was a Teshiwahurian Old Speech word for "dragon", a creature of myth which Zhe'kae-Chah closely resembled, right down to the prodigious, webbed bat-like wings. As such, he was often referred to as "The Dragon" among even his own kind.
"Speak", he commanded.
"The human-born warlord Arvenall Dampiko and his military coterie have at last arrived. I have taken the liberty of alerting Ometh Nasteqian Vice-Admiral Shrai'Lagmendo of Dampiko's presence. Shall I also prepare Vyngreak Norrin, the so-called "Tammoom", for the meeting as well or would you like audience with the Vice-Admiral and the warlord separately from The Tammoom?" Ptoleria inquired, already aware of the answer, but acting according to court protocol.
"I will confer with Shrai'Lagmendo first, and then you may bring in the warlord," he said in rumbling, heavily-accented bass tones. As he spoke, his pronunciation peaked on the hard consonants of the human words he selected, where D and G letter sounds at the end of spoken syllables sounded like the letters T or K and ending vowels to words terminated weakly, almost as if swallowed. "We cannot have the fiery, and often adversarial, rhetoric of the Tammoom disrupting the development of logical, surgical strategies."
She allowed herself a small and brief smile. She had been right.
"Do you think the warlord has any idea that he is entering into a conspiratorial partnership with a Saurotetramorph?" the Captain of the House Guard wondered aloud.
"I don't think Dampiko cares one way or another," The Dragon said. "He cares nothing for his species. All he cares about is gaining possession of more of his supposedly precious Ikarenium ore and obtaining more information about the location and ownership of the Laukenmass Lazulux."
"And what will you tell him about the Lazulux?" Ptoleria asked.
The Dragon spread his huge, black taloned hands expansively. "Ah, yes, that... I will not lie to him. I will tell him exactly what he expects to hear, which is, while indeed sincere, an implausible notion he holds dear despite any lack of real evidence to give it credence, a kind of truth. He need not know that we would never share knowledge of the Lazulux with gene-trash like him."
"You are as wise as ever I have known you to be," Ptoleria said.
The Dragon made an impatient and dismissive chuffing sound past the curved fangs lining his long muzzle. "Stop that. The needless flattery is unbecoming. Do not worry, however this situation plays out, I will keep my promise and give you one or the other of them to eat. If things go extremely well, maybe both."
Ptoleria's smile returned, far larger than before and her heart swelled. Her happiness in response to his words, was so intense she refrained from staring into his face, towering half a man's height further above her. She did not want to embarrass herself.
Ptoleria, an artificial human grown in the bio-vat Incubatorium ,was engineered from carnivorous, cannibalistic, Hyaenirax gene stock.
She was secure in the knowledge she was special. Her Master, The Dragon, treated her so well.
* * *