Light from the planet's dual suns fell in a silent, steady rain of multispectrum radiation down through the layers of the atmosphere, past the Exosphere at the edge of space and the Thermosphere where solar activity strongly influenced atmospheric temperature, into the Mesosphere where weather was birthed to reach the turbulent Stratosphere where the Ozone Layer flourished and where the energy from incoming ultraviolet radiation was absorbed, protecting life on the planet's surface. That sunlight from space, born from the multi-millenia old furnace of a red giant star and the fully-convected, hydrogen exhausted nuclear reactions from a blue dwarf star, showered a never-ending torrent of highly-agitated particles into a vast, self-regulating, geospheric magneto-field, touching everything upon the biorealm's voluminous surface, that "spoke" to the planet Teshiwahur...
The Withered Land was a living interactive network, a synergistic superorganism, a trophic-dynamic place where various elements upon which planetary life depended communicated with one another to keep the planet aware, though "aware" in a non-sentient, non-human sense, of the major events that transpired in and around it. Geobiologically reactive systems of feedback and self-regulation initiated pre-coded responses and counter-actions to and from the planet's ecology.
Evolution never ceased, even though the world was fatally poisoned by the constant, violent galactic ravages created by the effects of The Wound on its solar system, and mutation ran rampant, always in process. Whatever would injure or lacerate or scar the planet was examined, diagnosed and absorbed to create new and stronger defenses against any recurrence of such destructive assault. Teshiwahur was an ailing, bilious beast stubbornly determined to survive its macabre and gruesome ailments. It was graceless and mean, barbarous, brutish and savage and it did not care one whit about the tiny, fragile, scrabbling life that infested its surface like a twisted form of eczema.
The light fell down to the planet's surface and told tales as it fell: there were hurricane-level storms lashing the extreme arctic climes with massive discharges of molecule-shredding black lightning, the detritus of a disintegrating comet that passed into the "goldilocks zone" between the orbits of Pex'Insava and Teshiwahur rained down upon the empty plains of the humid, jungle-covered eastern hemisphere in chunks the size of buildings, a rare and heretofore uncatalogued virus, nested within the dessicated soil of the quicksand-like, rolling metal deserts of the southwestern continent, emerged from an eon's-long slumber after the impact of a meteorite, exposing the microbes to sunlight, and was rapidly infecting all animal life with a rabies-like condition that could only be sated by the consumption of organic flesh...
Anything beautiful born from this planetary biosystem was the result of a perverse accident.
It was not a place that would commonly be described as pretty. The hillside clearing was an elongated, irregular hexagonal shape, a grassy meadow encompassing twenty-seven acres overlooking the eastern side of the cliff's running edge overlooking the harbor. The meadow was an uneven carpet of bluish-green grass, gunmetal gray moss, and knee-high thatches of twisting weeds that skimmed scattered strips of naked rock. It was mostly hidden from view by a trio of mammoth stone projections facing the watery horizon. It was difficult to get to, no wheeled or treaded vehicle could traverse the narrow, uneven path from the metropolis below to climb it and the channel cut into the hillside that paralleled the cliff's face was at such an extreme angle as to require superior-grade mountaineering equipment in order for it to be manually ascended.
In ages past, a fierce battle had been fought there. It had been a harsh and cruel contest between warring seaboard tribes battling for coastal supremacy in the shadow of the spinning micro-moon that dominated the sky over the tempestuous waters of the then-embryonic harbor. But no monument had been erected to commemorate that battle, no plaque had been placed to denote its significance or to list the names of the dead. On that dark day, both tribes had been overpowered, overwhelmed and crushed by the surprise, unanticipated interference of a legion of the Emperium's well-armed shock-troops, dispatched by an angry Regional Governor who had grown weary of and impatient with fractious tribal politics in a territory he had declared as no longer belonging to either group. By his order, both the tribes were mercilessly put down, their rough-hewn, self-made, salvaged weaponry no match for the high-end technological killing power of the armament in the Emperium's massive arsenal.
Blood had run across the land in shin-deep pools. The bodies of the fallen had been stacked as high as a tall man's shoulders. Fires from the artillery fire concentrated there had burned for a full week beyond the end of that tragic clash. The hillside meadow had been, since that time, little more than a neglected, weed-overgrown mass cemetery.
But not now. Now the clearing was filled with the presence of the living.
This was where the army of the sadistic and predatory, cannibalistic Hyaenirax had gathered at the command of Vyngreak Norrin, the Tammoom, and they mingled with the mutated hordes of those cold-blooded, perpetually homicidal humanoid creatures called "Kadavereens", tribal, swamp-dwelling barbarians who lived in a fiercely competitive, closed society where ruthless bloodletting was the pinnacle of expression.
Qe'rithda, Sword of the Tammoom, stood next to the exoskeletal frame of his turbine-powered, single flier aero-glider and looked out across the eighteen rows, each row thirty-six men deep, of coarse-featured, feral faces of the ranks of armed men in the meadow with no small degree of dissatisfaction.
Qe'rithda was a broad-shouldered, thickly-muscled man of greater than average height and greater than normal athleticism. He was dressed in ceremonial armor that was a relic from another age, armor that was amongst the last of the still-working technological antiquities left from the Pang Xa'Omathra region's Hurengylle Dynasty, a regional familial political family from some three generations in the past. Qe'rithda, born of the Kohra'ander tribe, and who was no blood relation to those pale-blooded, sickly inbred aristocrats who'd acted as the tyrannical overlords for the Hegemonic Emperium's naval command force, was an ex-officer of the Ometh Nastreqian Sea Marshals Hazard Force. He had spent a tumultuous, and mercifully brief, period acting as the military Governor-General for the port-capitol of Peravendath harbor during the Second War of the Waves against the Peravendathian navy. Ometh Nastreq had decisively lost that military contest and Qe'rithda had been stripped of his commission and, for a time, imprisoned by the Peravendathians before being given a pardon by the new post-Emperium revisionist government which had seceded from the World-Father's crumbling, corrupt empire.
His upper body was encased in segmented, pewter-colored trauma armor composed of a custom-molded cuirass, with hinged breast and back-plates, over a long-sleeved chainmail hauberk, and a neck-protecting gorget, over which was an ornate sepia-colored, knee-length, kikko katabira-style duster cloak reinforced with hexagonal polyceramic plates. The shoulders of the duster cloak were implanted with conical steel spikes. His knee-high, jet-black boots were studded with palm-sized circular, silver medallions, each inscribed with the seal of the Ometh Nasteqian Sea Marshals Hazard Command. His weaponry was composed of two long swords, each a straight-edged combat saber with anodized blades, and he carried an ultrasonic frequency projector rifle in a sling-holster across his expansive back.
His helmet, the forward face of which had been forged to resemble the face of a hornet-like, winged insect called a "vrindi", completely covered his head. The bowl helmet was built with a moveable and collapsible protective, glare-coated visor was capped with a shark's fin-style comb that divided the headplate. The complete combat costume gave an observer the overall impression that Qe'rithda was more of a war-golem, frightening and implacably relentless, than he was a mere human.
A Major from the lead dragoon regiment of the Kadavereen's mounted cavalry, a man named Noamus, and a pair of Infantry Captains from the Hyaenirax's Mer'glackha Hunt Brigades, named Trez'grent and Jorande, stood at either side of the Sword of the Tammoom as the small band discussed strategy.
"Se'cham dwar, Mighty Sword of the Avenging Tammoom," Jorande said, using the standard salutation of respect. "Blessings upon your bloodline. May the cold light of the Black Heavens Above never blind your gaze."
"Dai'kemm-chaff, Ser'kin Huntlord, dai'kray," Qe'rithda said reflexively, the words for a long life and great prosperity like ash in his mouth.
"The ground troops are, as you can see, here. They are presented by ranking of their platoon by experience and ferocity. For obvious reasons, they do not present arms, inasmuch we do not want to raise the suspicions of any stray observer noticing the passage of these men to and from the borders of the city. So is this gathering on the parade ground to your liking?" Trez'grent queried diffidently. It was obvious there was something of pressing importance occupying the man's mind.
"It is fine, though, it seems to me, more than a little incomplete. We are missing the presentation of our land-based mobile artillery and of our seagoing naval brigades. And our aerial assault force is not gathered where we can inventory their readiness. But as you say, to openly display more in an area where we could possibly be seen by unauthorized observers courts the danger of discovery," Qe'rithda said.
"Indeed. Permission to speak frankly, sir?" Noamus asked Qe'rithda.
"Of course," the Sword answered, already weary of the customary ceremony of salutations and displays of respect prevalent in formal exchanges between Teshiwahurian military officials.
"This is ill-advised. All of it. This should be a covert operation, planned and organized off-the-books and performed under cover of darkness. This nonsense about open displays of strength before our enemies is likely to get us all killed," Noamus said.
"It is said that those of us still under the sway of Death remain its slaves, no matter our circumstance, no matter our plans. Those who are meant to die, will die," Qe'rithda quoted.
Noamus sighed and shifted his shoulders, as if making comfortable the carrying of an unwanted, heavy weight. His tone as he answered was one of long-suffering, but diminishing, patience. "Yes, yes, I, too, was present at the Tammoom's Declaration of the Arrival of the Great Bedlam. I heard the words. But I am a commander of fighting men, not a Prophet for the Masses, and I am Kadavereen, which means I am, above all else, a relentless Paladin of the AfterLife. I seek the Agonizing Perfection of the Exquisite Silence. My death only has meaning so long as it is in service to the destruction of my enemies."
"I must admit I always saw that philosophy to be a bit self-limiting," Qe'rithda said. "After all, doesn't it make more sense for the meaning of your LIFE to be in service to the destruction of your enemies? How do you get to enjoy the notoriety of being a great and fearsome warrior if it requires you die becoming that great warrior?"
"Don't be disrespectful. Playing word games with me is beneath us both."
"Don't be so thin-skinned," Qe'rithda said. "I was, I thought, simply sharing an idle observation with a trusted comrade."
Trez'grent spoke, interjecting while Noamus tried composing himself after Qe'rithda's chiding insult. "Why are we performing this charade, Sword? Even someone as unacquainted with military life as The Tammoom should be able to understand that, given the fact that Peravendath's army and navy outnumber our forces by a ratio of three-to-one, and even if this exercise is nothing more than a procedural drill to lift morale and do some much needed team building, it is inappropriate to the point of insanity that we rally like this, very nearly exposed to any roving eye, on the sovereign borders of Peravendathian soil."
Qe'rithda turned to face the Hyaenirax Hunt Brigade Captain directly as he said, "It will serve to keep everyone's minds off our Saurotetramorph allies. They have four times the manpower and weaponry, Alien-Tekk Offworld advanced weaponry at that, of Peravendath's forces. But the involvement of The Dragon, who has, in the past, savagely preyed on all our different bloodlines and noble houses, is hard for some of our troops to swallow. They are concerned as to whether or not he is really our trusted ally or whether he will let all us shortsighted, bloodthirsty human mammals have at one another, satisfying our silly vendettas against one another, until there is very little in the way of opposition left for him to destroy as he and his reptilian brethren conquers the remainder of the coastal Pang Xa'Omathra region."
"So the Tammoom does not trust the Dragon?" Infantry Captain Jorande concluded.
"He does not trust Zhe'Kae-Chah," Qe'rithda said.
"Then I can tell my men that, regardless how the long day goes, regardless who does or who does not win, that when the battle comes, there will at last be a great and terrible feeding beyond any they have known before," Trez'grent said.
"There will be meat enough for even your sanguinary Ravenous God of Five Frenzies to choke on," Qe'rithda assured the mutant cannibal.
The Hyaenirax soldier smiled and nodded to his comrade who, for the moment, appeared satisfied with the Sword's reassurances. For his part, Noamus the Kadavereen, made a face expressing his inner repellence towards the Hyaenirax officers. The Kadavereen did not eat the flesh of men. They were not scavenging beasts. Such a thing was anathema to them. Humans were foul, diseased things that rotted upon their deaths. To willingly take such corruption and waste into one's own body was anathema. The Kadavereen were only interested in who died and how many died and how painful the agony was they endured upon their deaths.
There was a purity, a beauty even, to the depths of their nihilism. And such beauty was a rarity, a flowering blossom made from hate, among the doomed societies populating the Withered Land.
* * *
She could do this. She could. She didn't want to, but she didn't see any way to avoid it. She just needed to stay calm and be ready to capitalize on even the tiniest break in their concentration, the briefest period of laxity in their paranoid disposition... she could do it.
She could kill them.
They could feel, as they traveled, that the corridor slanted downwards, running slightly below street level and the place smelled of salt, old dust and dry mildew. There were faint traffic sounds from the boulevard outside, above ground, and every dozen or so steps they had to raise their arms and sweep across the space in front of their faces to move aside a lacey curtain of sand-speckled cobwebs. So far as Kollachaim could tell, the corridor had the appearance of having not been used in many, many solar heliars, something he knew was patently impossible.
The duo from the Emperium's Offices of Continental Interior Hegemonic Diplomacy had not thought it necessary to retain the services of a team of protective sentries. This was what they deemed a "soft probe" and as such they wanted to minimize their presence in The City until they had a handle on the breadth and depth of the supposed "alien infestation" afflicting the metropolis.
And, too, it kept them from having to share any details of their itinerary and actions with a Captain of the Guard who would, per regulations, report back to their superiors.
"Do not let these surroundings fool your perceptions," Grand Vizier Karliandras Dru'ell said from the front of the small procession. As if she had read his thoughts, she directly addressed the Wytchborn Viscount's unvoiced concerns. "We are not underground and I and my aides walked this corridor as recently as yesterday. When we entered this network of halls and corridors we passed through a filter of sorts, a porous energy membrane that extends across physical space bisecting this part of the city and this area of the building we are in. Time, as the human mind understands the concept, is broken here, in these halls, and it does not conduct itself in such a way as to satisfy our need for linear progression."
"You say that Time, the measurement of sensorial and physical progression from one moment towards another into the future, is broken? How can that be? I am moving through Space right now and the position is space where I was only a moment ago is behind me... so that tells me that Time has passed, progressing forward. But you say Time is not working here as it does elsewhere. Why is that? Why here as opposed to anywhere else? And what exactly does that mean for us?" Duke Archarya Bak'usfane queried, his brusque tone colored by growing impatience.
"Time and motion are not necessarily linked in this zone through which we are moving. Things don't necessarily move from 'Here' to 'There' timewise. Our perceptions are unable to discern the subtle differences in the texture of our Reality. Consider this area of temporal instability an extended after-effect of The Wound in our area of galactic space," Karliandras said, trying to keep her explanation simple for a non-scientific audience.
"So Where and When are we?" Kollachaim asked. His education and training in reality-manipulation as a spellcaster made him more understanding of the concept Karliandras was attempting to define to them.
"This is Now, but an alternate Now to the Now we would be experiencing if we were still across the city in the Warlord's chambers. We are in a sub-chamber annexed to the main hall and technically we are experientially existing here at the same time you and Duke Bak'usfane were originally granted audience with Kolag Y'phree," she said. "This is an isolated cosmic pocket in which events run parallel to, but are not exactly congruent with, what happens outside the pocket in what you would consider 'normal time'. Time is not even remotely linear and does not progress from one moment to the next, but instead exists all at once, Past, Present and Future all together, and our individual free will, our reactive decisions to external stimuli, dictate what chronological avenue we may traverse out of a possible hundred or so paths for any single event-option."
"That is nonsense. That cannot be true," the Duke said. "And if, by some chance, what you say is true, then the Universe is far more fragile and far more insane than ever we imagined it could be."
"I have no need nor any desire to feed you falsehoods. It is true. That is why I was hesitant to bring you here," Karliandras said, managing to keep any trace of irony from her voice.
"Are you sure your hesitation isn't more likely due to having to share your information about the existence and location of the supposedly mythical Laukenmass Lazulux?" Kollachaim asked pointedly.
"I am sure," the plump First Advisor to the Warlord muttered crossly.
Kollachaim suddenly stopped walking. He frowned, his blue-skinned face darkening, and began to turn his antlered head from side to side, tilting his head as if he were listening for some faint sound he could not readily identify. He kept his position and turned in a full circle, carefully peering through the dim light into the gloom at corridor's end, searching, aware in the most primal way that something was not as it should be, subconsciously recognizing that something was seriously amiss even though he could not immediately identify the source of his unease.
"Grand Vizier, what have you done?" he asked, his voice pitched low and hushed, as if he were afraid of rousing something malevolent and dangerous from its slumber.
"I am sorry. I bear you no ill will. But I cannot allow this to happen," the portly Grand Vizier said softly. She was unable to look at the men as she spoke.
"What're you talking about? What's happening? Tell me what you mean by --...," Duke Bak'usfane sputtered.
When The Woman, taller than either man, the crown of her head scraping the arched top of the corridor's ceiling, suddenly emerged from a vacant point in space, both the arrogant Duke and the tall Qymaeruhn sorcerer gasped aloud. She literally walked out from empty air into their presence and she was an overwhelming sight.
"You should not have come here. There are things you are not meant to know, things lying far outside the parameters of politics and nationalism and human powerbrokering. I cannot bring you to see Ka'esh-Woganhi'e. You cannot be allowed to know that he exists," Karliandras said, her voice trembling as she, too, experienced a visceral reaction to the sudden presence of the leader of The Arbiters. The feeling that filled her was a dreadful paradox. It was like standing next to a writhing, sizzling bolt of living lightning. But, too, it felt like she was in the open doorway onto a vast and hungry void that threatened to swallow her whole.
She did not want to be here to experience this.
"What is a 'Ka'esh-Woganhi'e'?" the Duke demanded, his fear-strangled voice cracking.
"There is a Thing at the corridor's end. A tainted thing in a crystal sarcophagus, the child of the Darke Astromancers, a servant of Chaos, that hates you all and does not wish to be found," she said cryptically. "It was threatened. So it called out to its mother to protect it."
"By all the gods, are you referring to the Homo Obscuratum Irae? Is this Ka'esh-Woganhi'e the product of such a freakish patrimony? Woman, what madness have you unleashed?" Kollachaim said, hissing.
But Karliandras Dru'ell did not answer. Instead, the towering alien female in the time-shifting, interdimensional corridor spoke.
"Your doom," The Woman intoned, "She is talking about your doom." Her voice was unhumanly resonant and strangely accented.
The Woman's flesh abruptly split and something leapt out from the bloodless orifice at the front of her torso, something superhumanly quick that left the observer with the impression that whatever they'd seen was evolutionarily directly related to a cephalopod, something large and boneless and squid-like. That something lashed out in a quicksilvery burst of motion and enwrapped both the Duke and Kollachaim in writhing tentacles, clutching the two men like prey and lifting them off from their feet to drag them back to The Woman.
She looked at them with dead eyes and then the damp-fleshed, tentacled mass that extruded from her bifurcated torso rapidly contracted, its alien musculature bulging, irresistibly constricting around the struggling pair, but only crushing Duke Bak'usfane to a blood-sodden mass of screeching, meaty pulp. The Woman looked Kollachaim up and down, examining him as he violently trembled, and one of her tentacles gently caressed his thick neck and elongated, horned head. The Wytchborn Viscount swiveled his head away from facing The Woman and he locked wide and fearful, pleading eyes with Karliandras.
She looked away.
"I'm going to keep this one," The Woman said to Karliandras. "Quhr, the Invoker of Judgment, thanks you for your offering."
And just that suddenly she winked out of existence, taking a screaming Kollachaim with her.
Karliandras Dru'ell stumbled to the side of the dismal, stygian corridor and doubled over as she vomited. She reached out an unsteady hand to prop herself against the wall as she wretched , sweat dappling her pale, rotund form. Her protective shield of anonymity was gone. The very idea that she had now revealed herself to The Arbiters terrified her.
And then she heard the soft shuffle of footsteps behind her...
Still shaking and her eyes swimming with tears from her brief, but sudden onset of nerves and nausea, she turned to see a sight that nearly stopped her heart.
Kolag Y'phree was in the corridor, only a few steps from her, his strong and fearsome silhouette eclipsing the passage's dim luminance, and he was not alone. A trio of combat-ready Special Operations soldiers stood behind him, their weapons drawn and at the ready.
There was no way he hadn't seen what had happened.
"Wait," she stammered past a thick tongue. "This is not what you think..."
"Ssshhhh ---!" Shaking his leonine head, he looked down at her. "Don't try lying to me."
His large and gauntleted hand reached out for her, his face filled with compassion, his normally fierce gaze sympathetic, and he spoke softly as he helped her stand.
"You had to know that I would follow you," he said, "There was simply no conceivable way I would leave you alone and at the mercy of dishonorable and corrupt bureaucrats like those two. We are together in this enterprise, you and I, a team bound by circumstance, history and trust. After all, I am and have always been your closest ally, correct? There are no secrets between us."
Still reeling from shock, she nodded wordlessly.
"Good," the Warlord said. He leaned in towards her and bent so that his face was close to hers. And when he spoke, there was an undeniably intimidating edge of menace to his words. "Now show me this awful and mysterious thing you keep in its crystal sarcophagus. Then tell me everything about The Arbiters..."
* * *