He had been lifted on-high, ennobled beyond anything he had ever imagined he could be, and his senses were reeling from the flood of all he could now perceive.
The noise surrounding him was huge in the darkness, reverberating in a continuous booming roar that assaulted the ears and the mind, a sound that could be felt as well as heard, inspiring within any human spectators an atavistic rush of cold dread, welling up from the sunless depths of the subconscious mind. That feeling of dread was like the most precious of narcotics. It created a hollow spiritual hunger impossible to ignore. The phenomenon from which the noise issued was mesmerizing. It was big, so very, very big and it thundered against the bitter-scented winds sweeping across the gateway to the Pnahrryian Sea heralding its relentless and dangerous presence with a demonic glee that any observer near it could feel. Created by the invisible tentacles of a powerful downstreaming gravity birthed by the micro-moon called The Ke'Tareveel, the stormy whirlpool threw colossal splashes of near-glacial seawater eight to ten stories high above the harbor and spawned mistrals wrapped in salty mist.
Vyngreak Norrin, he who had once proudly been known to his fellow humans as The Tammoom, stood atop the crumbling remains of a collapsed lighthouse, arms outstretched in rapturous euphoria, bathed in the primordial wildness of the churning maelstrom named Guarfaghn, that which people commonly knew as "the roar-devil". He could touch and see the ghostly curtain that separated the wicked from the divine. He could see the hated, reviled umbilical chord chaining Chaos to Order.
He had come there, to that vantage point overlooking the sea, via a strange and dream-like journey through the city's intensely animated landscape of confusion and unrest as even more of an outsider than he already was, moving like he was a ghost, haunting the edges of scenes of rapacious violence. Overturned vehicles, burning buildings, mobs of hysterical people running this way and that across a carpet of broken glass, the voices of terrified folks pleading and screaming as they became victims of predatorial invaders..., he observed a panorama of rampaging urban psychosis mostly created by his own hand, birthed by his power mad schemes and manipulations. He had helped sculpt the bestial face of what could only be called a New World Order and it was a hideous and spine-chilling thing. He had left the disturbing miasma of his meeting with The Woman behind him and he'd strode forth into the night trailing a vaporous reek of slaughter, a stench that tainted the souls of everyone he beheld. He was a harbinger of mass murder.
He could no longer pretend to be an agent of that which was Good and Just. He knew he'd abandoned such benign aspirations.
The Tammoom, that simple, yet charismatic shepherd of human revelatory need, was gone. He had now been remade, his skin afire and his bones aching in mutated agony, as one of The Arbiters. He was now a servant of the Mokaeren Host, touched by the Void-Gods. He'd become a substitute for the vampire mind-priest, Jotelokkur.
The Great Endeavor, the intricate conspiracy to which he'd formerly belonged, no matter meant anything to him. He was above such egocentric ambitions, no longer needing such self-aggrandizement. The war that encompassed the concept called Entropy was everything to him now. He understood. His actions now had cosmic consequence. The conquest of a city, the subjugation of the population of a territorial region, the enslavement of a continent meant nothing.
The true nature of Reality was about the eternal conflict. Order versus Chaos. It was all about slaughter. It was all about holocaust.
He was an Arbiter. Ultimately, his very existence, his reason for being, was centered around the destruction he could create.
He would kill as many as he could. He would kill as many as he could imagine.
For Quhr, all for Quhr.
He concentrated, deeply and forcefully, looking inward and seizing the contents of the well of energy in his transmogrified brain, and psychokinetic hooks created by his mind lashed out like the ends of bullwhips. They seized onto the subatomic electromagnetic lattice that composed the massive, fluctuating field of attraction between the whirlpool and the micro-mood that hovered some distance overhead. The ends of the extrasensory lashes wrapped buried themselves deep into the lattice and began pulling in different directions, warping and pulling apart the neat sequentiality of the lattice, breaking the quantum atomic bonds of the gravity field. Externally, Norrin began to hyper-ventilate and shake, his clenched teeth beginning to chatter, his body unnaturally taut and his muscles straining as he forced his mind to exert its influence over the power of the gravitometric field. His eyes had rolled back into their sockets and scarlet tears began running from their corners. His ears began to bleed. He began to snort thick clots of crimson mucous from his distended nostrils. The agony was beyond excruciating. He coughed and convulsively expelled a small flap of torn flesh.
Thousands of tons of sea water moved. The winds that fanned the waves of the harbor began to howl.
What he did, he did despite the limitations of human biology, mutated or otherwise. Despite the wondrous attributes and unknown possibilities inherent within the human mind, no living creature could ever create the amplitude of bioelectrical energy needed to even attempt such a staggering act of telekinesis. The power to do what he did was from elsewhere. From Outside. He was not the source of the energy affecting the colossal volume of turbulent water, but was instead more of a conduit and a managing locus for that energy. He controlled it. He focused it. He let it flow through him, unleashing it.
The whirlpool began to gradually rise, its shape inverting as massive currents of water flipped over upon themselves, and the massive spinning vortex took on the dancing conical shape of a spiraling liquid tower of gargantuan proportions.
Vyngreak Norrin's extended hands slowly and langorously waved in towards his body as he drew Guarfaghn in towards the shore...
... towards the city.
The spiraling cone of water moved haltingly towards land.
* * *
*** As irritatingly unpleasant as a splinter under a finger nail, it had vexed and haunted him for as long as he could remember. Though he had always been possessed of a curious nature and burdened with the soul of a wanderer, he had been forced to admit to himself that he had not wanted the knowledge that had been imparted to him. Reality itself was not as he'd originally understood it to be. It was broader, stranger and far more complex than he'd even had the capacity to imagine. And he'd learned that Reality was coldly logical in an unhuman and savagely impartial way that flew in the face of every concept of religious faith to which he'd ever been exposed. He had seen no evidence of an afterlife's paradise, seen no heaven, and seen no hell. But he HAD seen into windows looking in on shifting, metamorphosing pockets of TimeSpace no human had ever before known to exist. As a result of his investigations, he'd seen too much and neither his mind nor his soul had been ready for it.
The Multiverse was a cruel and exacting taskmaster, a cosmic para-celestial spider's web, an incredibly vast and deep ocean of varied actualities unconcerned with and apathetic to the existance of Humanity. Everything everywhere was somehow in some way connected, even if only tenuously, but at the center of it All, a swirling cloud of unidentifiable Nothingness hungrily cannibalized the numerous and diverse strands of the greater parent web.
It was what it was and it demanded what it demanded, working in a way in which the Past and the Present and the Future all blended together, without bias or prejudice towards Life or Unlife.
It was the Multiverse. It was All of Existence. And as staggeringly majestic and significant as that was, it was frighteningly fragile. Reality could be broken, it could be smashed beyond all repair.
The Laukenmass Lazulux could do that.
Since learning such things, Rarbuji'i Koraevenus had struggled to keep himself from hysterically weeping his way into raging madness. He'd struggled...
But he'd never ever know whether or not he'd succeeded. ***
They followed the ghost. Its presence was an impossibility and accepting the fact of its existence was tantamount to madness, but during a time of madness the act of doing something insane held within it an undeniable logic. It was not their first nor their best choice, but it was a choice during a moment when it was probable that inaction born of analysis could have gotten them killed. It communicated to them and it interacted with them. The apparition was what could be classified as an "intelligent haunting" --- except that it wasn't exactly haunting anything or anyone. Instead, the revenant acted as though it had been expecting to reconnect with the world of the living since it/he had been forced to abandon his grip on Life. The spirit instructed and it commanded, it exercised its limited, but unavoidable, influence over them knowing they were driven to conspire with it.
"Unto you, I shall reveal the Truth and that knowledge shall reshape and transform your future. You will at last see -- and you will know horror as you marvel." It was an unwelcome pronouncement that had heralded the fact that more trouble and tribulation lay ahead for them.
Nygeia, mistrustful and defensive, had initially responded warily to the apparition's declaration. "We're not going anywhere with you. And, if you're wise, you'll make it a point not to interfere with our egress from this place."
The thing that had identified itself as Rarbuji'i Koraevenus had regarded the warrior-sorceress with a manner that was equal parts disdain and amused curiosity.
"Interesting. I can see that your kind has changed very little during my sojourns away from this squalid Sphere of Actuality. Your mistrust is misplaced. The activation of the Laukenmass Lazulux has drawn me here. I am here to help. The Lazulux heralds only destruction and devastation to any and to all who are exposed to it. This I know from experience. You say you seek to leave this geographical locale. That is wise. But the only way you can leave here is through me."
"... and here I thought that things couldn't get worse...," Nygeia said, hanging her head, her thick tumble of auburn hair powdered with ash and splintered particulates in the aftermath of the battle.
There was little to be gained by more discussion, given the apparition's propensity for vague, enigmatic responses to questions, and time was definitely of the essence. Too, they all knew they couldn't safely stay where they were. So they followed the ghost into the darkness that had swallowed the bowels of the battlezone.
The sound of rapid footfalls echoed down the length of the corridor. Many footfalls. More than one person, but the cadence was rhythmic, controlled. The muffled sound of people running in formation. Soldiers. Coming closer.
Not good. Avoid them. Don't let them know you're there. Signal the others to keep their heads down and stress they make sure they navigate the deepening shadows cautiously, taking extra care to avoid making a sudden clamor because of clumsiness. They're injured. They're in shock. They're not prepared for more combat. Don't let the hunters know where you are.
Keep moving. Stay silent. Keep together. Stay away from lobby and foyer areas, away from open antechamber vestibules. Watch the shadows. Stealth saves lives.
They entered an extended linear enclosure, a winding path on the inner concourse, where the lights were out, the inset ceiling fixtures twisted and charred, the luminant bulbs shattered by blaster fire. They could still smell smoke.
Many steps ahead of the battle-weary group, and apparently innured to or unconcerned with his present surroundings, the macabre specter that was the physical manifestation of the long-departed, mad adventurer Rarbuji'i Koraevenus hovered, a glowing patch of outer space inset into the murky gloom, and waited for them to catch up...
Wait. What was that? From out the gloom, a sudden flash of movement on the left...
Nygeia extended her left arm, her hand's palm forward, fingers splayed, and she breathlessly muttered a brief incantation, a Spell of Redirection and Repulsion. The violence of a confrontation would serve no purpose other than to alert other of their enemies of their location. Her skin tingled as a cascade of tiny bio-electrical currents emerged from her flesh to dance across the distance to create a mirroring effect between her and an armored duo of Kadavereen mercenaries. They didn't see her or the people whom she led down the corridor. Instead, they saw a projected optical inversion of the wall nearest them reflected in the dimness. Something at the backs of their minds subtly told them they weren't threatened by nor otherwise interested in what lay beyond that immediate pathway.
They passed her by unaware of her presence. And they were unable to see or to sense the presence of Rarbuji'i Koraevenus.
Nygeia closed her hand into a fist and withdrew it from in front of her body, simultaneously exhaling a lungful of smokey, dust-laden air. Electrical currents and their fields resumed their proper pre-aligned paths in the vicinity around them. The prestidigitated optical illusion quietly dissolved.
A rustle behind her snared her attention. It was Lumynn.
"M'Lady, far be it from me to doubt the logic of your plan. I imagine you have a rather unique perspective on things, you being both a warrior and a sorceress and all that. But why are we descending deeper into the building? We should be up top, getting out of here," he whispered urgently.
"Really? Never crossed my mind. How many mercenaries and armed terrorists and Saurotetramorph warriors do you feel comfortable battling? I figure that even after what we've already been through there are likely fifty or so assailants still roaming the ground floor and entrances. I know that I, for one, am not all that keen on getting a partical beam blast through my face or a sword or a spear thrust through my guts," she answered crossly.
"And you think something different is waiting for us down here?" Lumynn countered.
"Why don't you ask the ghost?"
Lumynn's face wrinkled in displeasure. "Frankly, I prefer to spend as little time as possible in the presence of a dead man's reanimated consciousness. So, no, not going to do that."
"You don't trust him, or should I say 'it'? Either way, you seem anything but eager to follow Koraevenus' lead..."
"No offense, but Magick and all things supernatural distress me."
Nygeia chuckled softly. "No offense taken."
"It's just that Koraevenus' spirit, if we can call it that, and personally I'd have to say I prefer the phrase 'disembodied surviving intelligence', made a point of materializing as far away from the area you've called 'Ground Zero' as it/he could. Now that makes me ask myself, why would a ghost worry about popping up in the middle of a blast zone? Do you see what I'm getting at?"
"Yes, I do," she replied with long-suffering patience. "But I think that the revenant is attracted to sentient living minds. It needed to connect with people. That wave of gravitometric energy that nearly swept away everything would not have discriminated between friend and foe. It was a modest projection of a replicated and contained celestial event. It destroyed mammals and saurians alike. And everything organic that was at the Point of Origin for that energy wave was immediately disintegrated when it was triggered. The invading assault unit responsible for triggering it knew that. It was a suicide play."
"So we're heading for the Point of Origin and everyone at that place is probably dead," Lumynn concluded. "And when we get there, we'll look for a way that leads outside, the same path to outside this building that the assault team used to get inside. And, while that is happening, Koraevenus' ghost will probably impart some astonishing nugget of knowledge to us that will get us out of this mess. At least, that's what I hope will happen."
"I'm rendered breathless by your unbridled optimism... Yes, something like that. And, Lumynn, we've been comrades at arms now long enough for you to refrain from calling me 'M'Lady'. You know my name. And I know that when you do call me that you're actually calling me a jackass."
"Oh. Picked up on that, did you?" The former monk shrugged and sighed, looking behind himself to signal to the wounded Yllvanea Razora and the barely ambulatory Vashnur Xhant that it was safe to approach. He hesitated a moment before cautiously saying, "You know we'll find him alive, don't you? At the Point of Origin, that is. He'll be there. He's an incredibly hard man to kill."
Nygeia turned fully around to face Lumynn as she allowed herself a moment's respite from grim vigilance. "I know. I do. But I thank you for that, my friend."
Lumynn said nothing more as he stepped away into the darkness, one hand trailing the wall against which he was standing, to lend the Red Archivist a hand with assisting the grossly maimed Grand Vizier move onward with the group.
"What is that thing we're following?" Yllvanea Razora queried irritably. "Haven't we had enough misadventure for one day?"
"It would be helpful if you could stop whining long enough to actually be useful for something," Lumynn crossly said to her as he shouldered the majority of Vashnur Xhant's gangly bulk. "What say we give that a try?"
"That thing might be an alien intelligence intent on leading us to our deaths...," the Archivist persisted.
"I'll be fine with that as long as you die first," Lumynn said. "I don't suppose you've noticed that nearly everything and everyone we've encountered thus far has been intent on orchestrating our deaths, have you? So listen, this spectral manifestation claiming to be Rarbuji'i Koraevenus is an intelligent entity that, so far, seems very focused on eliminating the threat of the cosmic artifact that nearly killed us all. Sounds to me like he is on our side and we could use a few friends right now, especially friends with extrahuman abilities. So if you don't have anything constructive to add to the proceedings, shut the hell up."
Rarbuji'i Koraevenus waited ahead, inside a cocoon made of the cosmos, his manner glacially dispassionate and slightly obdurate, while eerily floating above the polished floor at the height of a tall man's thigh.
"Follow..." it demanded in a hollow voice thoroughly devoid of sonic vibrancy.
They did. As it turned out, they didn't have all that far to go before they reached their destination. And, once there, they promptly regretted having come so far and through so much to cast eyes upon what was revealed to them.
"You will at last see -- and you will know horror as you marvel."
* * *
Akkitus Orthwaine was amazed. And shocked. Neither of those things was easily done to him. He'd seen much in his time, much that had, in its time, distressed, flustered and even frightened him, but he'd never seen anything like the harrowing tableau presently before him.
A sudden electrical discharge from shattered power junction circuitry in the damaged walls and ceiling of the expansive corridor spewed a quick series of jagged power arcs that resembled lightning. The brilliance from the strobing flares burned away the shadows in the murky, semi-dark space, throwing every visible detail into stark relief. Littering the floor was an uneven field of broken machinery and splintered metal shrapnel composed of abandoned and broken weapons, rent body armor, and torso and limb carapaces from robotic anatomy. The field of shattered metal surrounded a mass of bodies, powerfully built human-reptile hybrids and deformed mutant-spawn troglodytes, some broken and bleeding, but most gripped tightly in the fist of violent death. Those bodies were randomly and messily piled eight to ten high. Standing atop the hill of pummeled, impaled and dying flesh, were a quintet of frenziedly battling man-shaped figures, the crowns of their bobbing, helmeted heads scraping the high vaulted ceiling of the corridor as they fought. Ignoring the awkwardness of their perch on top of the lumpy, misaligned, and unbalanced corpse-mound, the combatants danced with the confidence of warriors seasoned in the art of death-dealing. They fought wildly, recklessly, giving no thought to strategy or to defense. They roared and cursed in their inhuman language, spitting the bitter vitriol of their hatred towards their antagonist. The battle in which they'd been engaged had lasted too long and demanded from their forces too great a price for them to consider unleashing anything less than the highest level of savagery they could against their obstinate, wrathful opponent.
It was incredible. More and more deadly warriors streamed in to join the attack, arriving from the upper floors of the ruined and partially collapsed building and yet they came up short as they collided with the outermost edges of the mound of the dead.
It was D'Spayr who was the focus of their fury, even while the former Pelagic Corp Special Tasks Militiamen Murshipaz and Oerdyke, both wounded, battled ferally at his side, flanking him. And by All-the-Gods-and-Devils-There-Were, the Knight looked as though he was comfortably in his element. Heavenly Creator forgive him, the Heart of War was D'Spayr's home. Akkitus knew that what he beheld was more than just a man, no matter how experienced or how well trained he could possibly have been. He was looking at the Sword of Justice, the Hammer of Judgment, the Great and Bloody God of Vengeance made flesh.
Next to Akkitus and towering over him, the wild and tigerishly bloodthirsty Veranus Halodean was ripping apart a trio of Instrumentality cyborgs, easily completing the bodycount of the dozen or so the dragonish reptile had encountered in the few moments since it had burst onto the scene. The sounds of their metal exoskeletons breaking and shattering was almost deafening. It was though through some sorcerous, alien psychic connection, as if by merely sharing the same relative geographic proximity with one another, the brutish dragon-steed and its lethal rider fueled one another's berserker rage. The Saurotetramorph assault squad, the Kadavereen mercenaries and the Instrumentality of the Constant were no match for the merciless and unrestrained, sanguinary opposition they faced.
This day would hold no triumph for the armies of the Wicked.
Akkitus noticed the unusually motionless, gray-blue, waxen fleshed man staring at the battle as though mesmerized. The man had the antlers of some great stag of the forest and Akkitus immediately knew the man to be a Qymaeruhn. Veins stood out at the man's temples and his corded muscles strained as if he were struggling against a physical barrier even though no wall, barricade or blockade was near him. The metal men attacking D'Spayr seemed the focus of the man's concentration. Akkitus guessed the man was somehow tethered to the horde of the Instrumentality, either through magical or extrasenory psychic means. He was their puppeteer.
Akkitus extended his raised arm and made a fist, a series of plates on his arm shifted and flipped into a new and different configuration, unfurling into the shape of a short-barreled, large-bored energy beam weapon. A sizzling charge swiftly built up in the weapon, awaiting release. He fired...
Kollachaim released a feline screech resembling the cry of an angry wildcat and was blown off from his feet. A sheath of flames enwrapped his tumbling form and a flurry of hot sparks flew from off his body. He tried to stand. Akkitus fired his particle beam arm-cannon again. Kollachaim was sent flying backwards head over heels into the wall with force enough to embed him into the corridor bulwark, where the surrounding structure tightly encased his trembling body. Kollachaim's final breath left him in a long, ragged hiss.
The cluster of Instrumentality cyborgs still mobile abruptly stopped fighting and, for a moment, milled about aimlessly. Then they simply winked out of existence, disappearing.
The agitated, battle-maddened dragon-steed trumpeted its victory against its metal-shelled enemies with primal fierceness.
And at that moment there resounded a pain-maddened scream as D'Spayr's twin bladed sword hacked the last of the remaining Kadavereen mercenaries in half as Murshipaz and Oerdyke watched, exhausted. The two body segments fell gorily in opposite directions atop the cadaver-hill.
It was then that, his internal energy supply nearing depletion, Akkitus wearily dropped to his knees, barely retaining what was left of consciousness.
* * *