"Don't just stand there looking frightened and ill..., tell me something," he commanded roughly, not deigning to look his subordinate in the face.
"There's too much wreckage, too much debris. It's obvious a savage battle was fought here..."
"Is there a body? Did you discover a body?"
"No, my lord, we haven't as yet found her body. There's torn flesh, shreds ... There's blood --- everywhere. So much blood."
The big man sighed past thinned lips, his eyes squinted shut. "And the beast?"
The subordinate hesitated before answering. When he at last spoke, there was a slight quaver to his low tenor... and more than a touch of bitter regret. "The thing was actually there when first we came into the chamber. It was injured, hurt rather badly according to the reports from the guardsmen who breached the portal into the Grand Vizier's secret chambers and it was wounded, laughing around a mouthful of its own blood. It attacked them. And apparently it was not nearly so fragile a creature as we believed. Even wounded as it was, the thing slew three men, men in full battle armor carrying multi-barrel shatterbeam weapons, in mere seconds before it was repelled by a squad of Crisis Assault Troopers. It was like an animal, all fangs and talons and bloodlust. Or perhaps more like a devil. I think it was enjoying the violence. At any rate, it quickly retreated back into the remains of its shattered crystal sarcophagus and then disappeared in an explosion of hot, blinding light."
"Never mind all that. Did you find any trace of her presence? Where is she?"
"We don't know yet, my lord. There were only the pools of cooling blood. We're still searching."
Kolag Y'phree drew in a deep draught of breath and squared his wide shoulders. "Without a corpse, we assume then that she's still alive. You don't know her like I do. Her illness is not a handicap, but is instead a spur that relentlessly drives her. Her strength of will is a powerful force, it is undeniable and impossibly potent. Despite her injuries, no matter how severe they may be, Karliandras Dru'ell is still out there alive. And still dangerous. I know it. I can feel it. Double the number of men assigned to the search. Comb every building, hunt for her down every street. She is the Grand Vizier. The breadth and depth of her knowledge makes her a high-risk threat."
"What about the beast outside our city's walls? Is it wise to divert our attention away from the threat that monster poses?"
The Warlord answered with measured slowness. "The creature is under the control of forces far beyond our understanding. We don't know its true motivations. We can't waste time or resources trying to anticipate its next actions. All we can do is stay vigilant, be disciplined and organized, and be ready to defend ourselves to survive its next assault. In the meantime, we need to make sure we don't experience further sabotage and chaos from within through the vengeful actions of our rogue Vizier."
"And, if she is still alive, on the occasion that we find her," the Warlord's slender, officious subordinate began saying cautiously, "what is it you actually expect us to do with her? From what we've observed of the bloody shambles of her private sanctum, she will likely be mortally wounded or mutilated past our ability to immediately interrogate her. Of what use will she be? Frankly, I must again say that we have larger and more dire concerns..."
"For the moment, please be content to pass along the command instructions I gave you."
Nue'methnin, Kolag Y'phree's Aide de Camp, nodded and contacted his operations team leaders, proceeding to relay a curt series of orders through his armor's throat-comm. After he spoke, he leveled a querying stare at the Warlord and tilted his helmeted head emphasizing his unasked questions.
Kolag Y'phree returned the look, his own gaze emotionless and unreadable. He wrinkled his bearded face and sniffed before speaking.
"Karliandras Dru'ell is something special. This city needs her. This government needs her. We cannot let events and circumstances turn her against us. We have to remind her how much she has invested in this new nation, this new world we are shaping outside the control and tyranny of the Emperium. She cannot be allowed to lose her focus and make the mistake of realigning herself with the World-Father and his regime. You can see that, yes?"
"I can," Nue'methnin said. "But how likely is that to happen right now? She's wounded and she's on the run..."
"She's not running. She's plotting. She's not making herself a visible target. There's a difference. Did I ever tell you how I met her? No?"
"No, my lord, you haven't," the adjutant-commander of defensive forces answered, noticeably restraining himself from voicing his criticisms. The man's condemnatory evaluation of Kolag Y'phree's current actions and mindset was clearly evident. The Warlord's ruminations were trying his patience.
The pair had decided to take conference inside the third floor's High Great Chamber, a long rectangular room under the castle buttresses forward eaves, and had lain their weapons atop the oval table sitting on a woven carpet emblazoned with a picturesque depiction of a scene from the War Against the Gorgahnuns during the Age of Blood, historically called the "Kor'tepha'a Shenq'ail". The two men stood at the window-side edge of the Great Chamber near the towering Bishop's Hutch across from the wide maw of the brass and stone fireplace. A quartet of floor-to-ceiling pillars carved from the thick, thoracic rib bones of some ancient and mighty beast were set in parallel rows running the length of the room. The vaulted ceiling was composed of a collection of aged wooden panels decorated with carvings from some runic alphabet. The massive fireplace dominated its inner wall, its man-high jambs striped with serpentine bas-relief carvings while its facing and mantel were decorated with the frontal projections of animal skulls of varying sizes. The overmantel and breast of the fireplace was dominated by a single mounted skeletal artifact, that being the huge skull of a bestial pachyderm-reptile hybrid. The sky through the latticed, multi-paned windows cast a fierce cobalt blue-tinted light that threw a jumble of gray-green shadows across the walls and floor. Through those windows, the warrior duo had a view of mid-morning settling over the miasma of industrial haze cloaking The City's patchwork skyline.
"It was fifteen, maybe seventeen, orbital solar heliars ago, back when I was a card-carrying member of the Hegemonic Emperium, a Shieldsman for the Territorial Mobile Militia under the Continental Dominion's Territorial Security Command, and it was in a trashy, impoverished dukedom called Thassagyronea. We'd been sent out across the northeastern polar desert edges of the Forever Plain. Barren, ugly, dry and populated by venal and unsophisticated, angry people who worship murder and slaughter. The Emperium had sent us there to quell an uprising at a subterranean saltpeter mine. The mine was important because saltpeter was used at that time as the primary component in the manufacture of explosive black powder and black powder was used in road building, in creating primitive projectile ammunition and as a propellant for simple war machine engines. It wasn't until later that the mineral was used to temper the inside nickel and chrome surfaces of barrels for particle beam blasters. Sorry, I got a bit off-track. Sometimes I get a bit lost in the minutia of details ... Anyway, she had been a novice Witch, an Enchanter, who served as Lead Archivist for Qundin Academacea's 3rd Continental University. She'd been assigned to the cesspool that was Thassagyronea by bureaucratic superiors jealous of her intelligence and abilities. In her capacity as Lead Archivist, she was able to spy on rebel technologists and on the local practitioners of The Discipline for the Emperium, reporting back on any discoveries or breakthroughs made in anomalous physics. And that was interesting because she fervently hated the Emperium..."
"As did you. Be it Fate or Destiny, you were in Thassagyronea to make a connection with one another. And indeed that connection was made. So I take it you saw yourselves as kindred spirits," Nue'methnin said, hoping to move the Warlord's ruminations along more rapidly.
"Not quite. She tried to kill me, actually. Almost succeeded, too."
Nue'methnin raised an eyebrow.
"I can tell you're thinking I'm several kinds of a fool to have then brought such a person into my confidence," Y'phree rumbled. "But the vision of the future she laid out for a person like myself, as a renegade opposing the World-Father's military machine rather than as yet another faceless pawn in his ages-long game of manifest empire, was both seductive and incredibly enabling. She had no doubt I could do the things I managed to do, had no doubt that the World-Father would be too busy scrambling to retain control over the remnants of his crumbling dominion to care about what a deserter from his forces was doing to pose any threat of stopping me. And she foresaw the discovery of Ikarenium below the very grounds on which this fortress is built."
"Did she manage to foresee the powerful demonic monster standing outside our battlements?"
Y'phree sighed and shook his head at Nue'methnin's stubborn resistance to see beyond the obvious. "No, but if she did, she did not think it worthwhile to mention it, which in turn means that the monster is not so great a threat as all that. She does not imagine that it will succeed in killing us all."
"Or her not mentioning such a vision meant that she'd discovered she could yet kill you another way, via proxy, where she had before failed," the Aide de Camp stated.
"Perhaps."
"I mean no disrespect, m'lord, but why do you place your trust in such a person?"
The Warlord paused a long moment before answering in measured tones, "Because, like me, she understands pain. Because, like me, she has weathered a measure of shame and despair in her life that would break most other people. Because, like me, she understands the value of ruthless mental, emotional and spiritual focus in the matter of achieving a goal. Because, like me, the only thing she truly fears is becoming irrelevant and, thus, powerless."
"You think she is like you, m'lord, but in truth she is not," Nue'methnin countered. "She is a prestidigitator, an illusionist, a witch. Not anything so majestic as a sorcerer or a mage. Not a master nor even an acolyte of the dread science of The Discipline, but instead a conjurer. She possesses no Magicke of her own, and no access to Magicke through ritual, but instead uses machines, gadgetry and appliances to simulate the power of the arcane arts. You are a warrior, a military leader and a statesman. You have a code. She is an educated and well-read fraud afflicted with a hungering greed and a massive ego. She has no code. She is not worthy of your trust."
"And yet, over the many heliars we have worked together, she has always before come through for me whenever I have needed her..."
"Because aiding you had always before worked to her benefit," Nue'methnin said.
"You're wrong," Y'phree said firmly.
"So why, then, are we having this discussion?"
"Because this isn't about any perceived power struggle or breach of trust between myself and Karliandras Dru'ell." The Warlord looked at his executive officer as though he'd suddenly discovered the man was brain damaged. "We are having this discussion because now, many long solar heliars after the Emperium's Great Revocation, our civilization's retreat from the forging of an interplanetary galactic empire, aliens have made uninvited planetfall here and they have found this city. Because, through reconnaissance by our planetary defensive networking technology, the World-Father himself knows that aliens have again, after the passage of so many long heliars, come among us. And that means that he now knows he needs to again pay us his attention. The Emperium will undoubtedly be sending an army to Niyaddour..."
"... and ...?"
"They'll come for a couple of reasons, to enforce the Edicts of Fealty to the Emperium, to reclaim the peace for the citizenry, and to perhaps investigate the Ikarenium mines. But be aware, they will know that Karliandras Dru'ell talks with aliens. That is something the World-Father will definitely find to be valuable."
Nue'methnin's frowned and, as he ruminated on Kolag Y'phree's words, his face slowly adopted an expression of horror as a realization dawned upon him.
"The Beast... When they come here, they'll find a monster from another world, that savage thing out there, standing watch outside our very walls. They'll see it and they'll wonder what it is we have done. They will figure that the Grand Vizier will have had a hand in bringing it down from the stars."
"Yes."
"And unless we can turn the Grand Vizier over to his forces when they arrive, he'll have his army kill everyone here until we can bring her out from hiding."
Kolag Y'phree pursed his lips and grunted in agreement. "Exactly."
Spitting a slew of bitter curses, Nue'methnin grabbed his helmet from off the table and bolted out from the Great Chamber, trotting down the corridor outside.
* * *
She had to keep moving, even though the effort was agony. The uncontrolled harsh shrieking at the back of her fevered brain was almost nonstop even as she managed to finally get control over the bleeding from her right shoulder and her left upper thigh. The aggrieved nerve endings clustered around those ragged bite wounds were beginning to calm down now that she had applied a liberal dosing of a topical anaesthetic to those areas. Her rough stapling of the palm-sized wounds with a series of small adhesive hooks had successfully arrested the frighteningly excessive flow of blood from the openings. She tried to conserve her energy and minimize her discomfort as she traveled, but, as she moved through The City's dimly lit back alleys, her wounds made smooth and efficient locomotion almost impossible and she cursed whenever she stumbled and fell. She was bathed in sweat and her exo-environ suit was in tatters, flaying her flesh with its ragtag ribbons as she staggered and slipped, teetering on complete collapse onto the harsh and dirty street surface beneath her hurrying feet.
*** He'd tried to eat her. The depraved bastard had actually tried to devour her flesh. He'd come at her with the single-minded, insane mercilessness of some predatory, meat-eating beast, his eyes glowing and soulless, and had sunk his teeth through the exo-environ suit to pierce her skin... He'd borne her down to the floor and she had felt the roughness and heat of his tongue on her, felt him shaking his head and tearing deeper into the wound, sucking and lapping up her blood as it rushed from the rips in her flesh... And then she'd activated the conflagration stone set into the necklace she'd always worn around her thick, short neck. The miniature mechanism had flared to life as an immolation wave, a microwave heat burst, had projected outwards from the gem, which, in actuality, was a lens through which to focus the concentrated microwave emissions...
Ka'esh-Woganhi'e had screeched loudly and then quickly jerked away, taking a ragged mouthful of her flesh with him. The sound of her scream had mingled with that of the alien's in the semi-dark chamber. She kicked at him. She had beat at him, pummeling him with her chubby fists. All to no avail. He had been far stronger than her. More so than the pain, hysteria had threatened to eject her madly pumping heart from her chest. Flailing her limbs, lying on her back, her hands had scrabbled about madly in a blind search for some kind of a weapon...
Something sharp had pierced her palm. There. Animal reflex had taken over.
She had swiftly grabbed a long splinter of naked stone from off the floor and had stabbed the creature repeatedly, in a frenzy of primal terror and revulsion, part of the stone spear breaking off in its exposed chest. ***
She had to keep moving. They would be searching for her. The search would be relentless and exhaustive and when they at last found her she would be made subject to brutal punishments of a particularly inventive variety. The Inquisitors, academics in suffering whom she herself had educated and trained, would target her most obvious weakness: her diseased flesh. As strong as she knew herself to be, she knew she would not be able to hold out for long against their insistent questioning. Madness brought on by physical trauma would induce her to divulge every secret thing she held dear. She would happily confess to every crime and every betrayal with which she would no doubt be charged to staunch, if only for a handful of heartbeats, their relentless assault on her broken body.
She could not let that happen.
She had to reach the subterranean concourse that led to the Old City, to the cavernous hollow of Niyaddour's understructure where the remains of the abandoned metropolitan railway station and terminal platform lay beneath the structural viaducts on which the new City was erected. It was there, in the shadowy Old City, where Karliandras Dru'ell had hidden esoteric and obscure devices of outlawed Enchanter-Tekk, the gadgets that were her many Machineries of Witchery.
As Kolag Y'phree's Grand Vizier, Karliandras had possessed responsibilities that were far greater than just being able to perform as a Prime Minister for the Warlord. Publicly, she was known to wield Power of Attorney to grant and enact legitimate governmental legislation in Kolag Y'phree's absence. Covertly, though, she was also depended upon to be The City's Minister of Command Doctrines and the Director of Territorial Technologies Development.
She helped Kolag Y'phree's governing council architect the Warlord's ideas and theories into real world application and that sometimes required the creation of a new mechanization or a new applied science. And it was at that point where the Machineries of Witchery came into use. Among the inventory of strange Enchanter-Tekk devices were machines made to facilitate the camouflage of physical objects, machines that could create and project moderate sized force field shields, machines that could alter and manipulate moderate sized magnetic fields, and machines that amplified the psychic abilities of anyone hooked up to it to allow them to reach into other human minds and create or implant nightmare hallucinations. None of the devices were overt military-style weapons, none were artillery cannons, none were rocket launchers, and there were no multiple barrel projectile guns or missile guidance systems. But there were other devices, darker mechanizations that could, for a short time, siphon, restructure and redirect energy to be used for opening dimensional gateways and releasing monsters. With such apparatus, Karliandras had secretly been able to keep the Warlord's limited technical powerbase on par with that of the Emperium with the aid of the Machineries of Witchery and more often, of course, she'd done that with the help and guidance of the varietal-dimension alien, Ka'esh-Woganhi'e. However, that was Then. Now, obviously, that scenario no longer played itself out.
She was not the Grand Vizier anymore. Now she was hunted, an outlaw likely labeled as a traitor. They would kill her when they found her, she had no doubt.
She could not let that happen.
And now, too, the Arbiter demon Grimmurmanthe was standing outside The City's damaged battlements, waiting for The Woman to give the word for him to slaughter the municipality's entire population.
This was no longer about ambition and control or about political scheming. Above all else, this had come to be about survival...
Suddenly, as she came from out her reverie, she was there, at the great monolithic entrance to the subterranean concourse into the Old City. Relief flooded her trembling limbs. Here, in the depths of ancient Niyaddour, a damned and doomed city of ominous and malignant antiquity that lay sleeping under the feet of the unmindful and unobservant people who walked the renovated, rehabilitated metropolis above ground, was the true source of her power. She stopped a moment to allow her deep, wheezing gasps to settle into rapid, shallow panting as she came down from the peak of her physical exertions. She blinked several times to clear her tear-filled eyes. In the gloom, she could barely just see the portal that opened onto the frost-rimed, stony recess where her Machineries of Witchery waited. Only a few more steps.
Yes, this was where she would re-take and guide her destiny. This was when she would again become more than a match for them. Now try it. Come for me now.
* * *
"This is neither the time nor the place for you to settle personal accounts against one another, no matter how dire the alleged crimes in question" the tall, muscular demi-god in purple armor said with implacable logic.
The towering black man in the red hood and cape had experienced much since he'd first been abducted and marooned among the strange, foreign climes of the Withered Land, where he'd survived eerie and sinister, dark encounters with hostile tribes and peoples. Along the way, he'd suffered exposures to enigmatic, near incomprehensible cultures and customs that had, in some instances, threatened his very existence. He'd managed not to succumb to desperation and melancholy. He'd barely managed not to go mad. He had, in a manner of which he was not proud, not only survived, but thrived in the prison of his new alien homeworld. He'd managed to retain what was left of his humanity and of his fractured soul. But there had been compromises as he'd adapted and evolved. Hard compromises. He'd come to realize in his heart of hearts that, despite his best intentions and efforts, he really wasn't all that nice a person. He could be hard and unforgiving. He could be unrepentently cruel. He'd come to discover that part of him, a somber and cheerless, long submerged part of his psyche, deserved nothing better than to be stranded among the thieves, sellswords, and assassins of Teshiwahur. And that realization made Adam Wilder more than a little angry at the best of times.
At the moment, on the bridge of the jetellin, he was not experiencing the best of those times.
Emaris Staurqe was standing between him and Rae'vynn Wyyng and Staurqe was not overmuch concerned with nor impressed with Wilder's reputation and status as the notorious Traveler in Red. The story of Wilder's traumatic and bloody cosmic dislocation and the brief, essential details regarding his forced assimilation into Teshiwahurian culture by Captain Wyyng, who became his personal mentor as well as his combat and fencing instructor, were of little interest to the synthetic superhuman. Frankly, his own subjective history since violently rebelling against the Emperium's Science Division at the Forge-Enclave was just as dark and barbarous as Wilder's. Kodespawn 77 had very little compassion to spare for The Traveler in Red. The simple fact of the matter was that Staurqe had, for the time being, aligned his loyalties to the battered crew of the Aerieakon and, with that, had put them under his exclusive protection. That did not mean that Staurqe held any particular affection towards Rae'vynn Wyyng and her crew. Quite the contrary, he found them to be, for the most part, irksome and annoying and not particularly intelligent. But he wasn't going to let a reanimated dead man from the Upworlds, an alien with the meaningless non-utilitarian designation of "Adam Wilder", arbitrarily punish or even kill Captain Wyyng for her past sins without some semblance of a formal judiciary process. It offended the Synthetic Alpha Progenitor's sense of order.
Meanwhile, for his part, the cool and calculating scientist inside Adam Wilder was busily concocting various offensive and defensive strategies he could use, if necessary, against Staurqe. Staurqe did not know a lot about the unusual abilities and skills possessed by The Traveler in Red. He didn't know about the low-level telekinesis, the extrasensory prescient time-sense, the biogenetically enhanced hyper-fast reflexes, the regenerative healing ability, nor about Wilder's super-dense skeleton and musculature. All things considered, given Staurqe's extreme powerhouse status, he didn't really need to know. On the other hand, the Traveler had, in his time acclimating to the Withered Land's complex evolutionary and societal history, learned a lot about Kodespawn Synthezoids. That put Staurqe at a distinct disadvantage despite his undeniably formidable power levels.
From behind her visor, Ryonne watched them both with tense attentiveness, her slim fist wrapped around the handle of her holstered particle blaster pistol.
Wilder narrowed his eyes, his anger and displeasure openly evident, but adopted a non-aggressive physical posture even though he stood his ground, remaining face-to-face with the artificial superhuman.
"I think you've misread my intentions. I mean no one any harm. I'm relatively sure we can all agree that we are, for the moment, all of us on the same side. Misadventure had made us allies, reluctant or otherwise. I was casually attempting to renew my acquaintance with Captain Wyyng and, in the midst of this insanity in which we find ourselves, assure her that she can rely on both me and my companion, Ryonne," Wilder said.
Before Staurqe could answer, Rae'vynn spoke. Her voice was flat, inflectionless, weary, as if she were overwhelmed by being confronted by the living representation of her past sins. She said again, for the third time since first seeing Wilder aboard the airship, "I'm sorry, Adam, I truly am. You cannot know how much I regret what happened between us."
"As your rather colorfully attired friend said, this is neither the time nor the place," Wilder responded.
"We're over the aerodrome," Durkka-jan blurted roughly from behind the nav-console, eager to break the tension on the bridge. "Bodies all over the place among the extensive wreckage. Landing platform is still operable, though. But I'm picking up several sets of active organic signatures down below. Looks like we've got people waiting for us. Could they likely be your crew, Traveler? I'm putting them through camera and on-scanner so we can get a good look..."
Despite his mood, taking the opportunity to look away from Staurqe's cold gaze, Wilder cast his eyes towards the forward monitor and could readily identify Nygeia, Lumynn and Akkitus Orthwaine out front, waving.
"I'd say we've got a few folks ready for boarding. Anyone care to give me a hand helping them?"
To no one's surprise, Rae'vynn Wyyng wordlessly strode over to the bridge's down-level stairwell and headed down to the jetellin gondola's lower dock bay, her purpose clear.
Wilder and Ryonne followed, an almost imperceptible nod passing between them.
Seeing the exchange between the pair, Emaris Staurqe sighed and motioned for Vandessha'Jai to follow them.
* * *