The shape of the tunnel's interior was square with an arched ceiling, possessing an overall height of three meters and a width of five meters, with its upper walls near the ends of the ceiling arch fitted with egg-shaped, snaking sectional conduits that ran the half-kilometer length of the subterranean passage. Light was supplied from lamps behind grime-stained oval lenses inset in the ceiling. Small swarms of feathery-winged moths mobbed together near the ceiling lights, casting strange and erratic shadows that moved across the walls and floor. Aging metal pipes for sanitation and rusted power box housings for electrical power cabling ran along the ceiling topping the vertical walls. The tunnel was dry, with wide swaths of stale, powdery, desiccated dirt clinging stubbornly to the tunnel's interior while swarms of crab-like, hard-shelled beetles scuttled across the cracked surfaces on either side.
A bank of aging photoelectric light sensors set vertically into the walls at the mouth of the tunnel created a crisscrossing latticework web protecting the entrance. Anything or anyone breaking the complex mesh of the light beams would trigger an alarm. Power was supplied to the light sensors courtesy of The City's vast, albeit waning, network of interconnected dry cell batteries, a network used more frequently since the citywide breakdown of maintenance and repair of electrical utilities in the advent of The Long Death.
The tunnel was a dense and flinty avenue that had, over three score orbital solar heliars, been host to covert episodes of brutality that included robbery, kidnapping, torture and assassination. It was a clandestine major artery known to only a select few that led into The City's sullen and gloomy heart.
D'Spayr's plan had been relatively simple. He would infiltrate The City via its underground access, navigating the spokes of the wheel of utility corridors and catacombs towards the secondary center-spool under the Third District of the Altex Prefecture. Niyaddour had, in its heyday, been divided into five Prefectures, each containing two districts, and after Kolag Y'phree had usurped control of the city from its corrupt, post-Emperium criminal masters, the Warlord had relocated the administrative center of power to the Altex Prefecture. The Knight had decided that the quickest and least chaotic way in which to short-circuit the Warlord's control over his forces, scattered as they were throughout The City as a defense against Grimmurmanthe the Arbiter, was to isolate and destroy Y'phree's military command from within. Shut down communications, disrupt supply chains, reroute munitions distribution, orphan the command structure, and then set the unsuspecting troops at each others' throats. If he hit their command center hard enough and fast enough, confused and disassembled their mission control, they wouldn't know what to do and they would doubt the authenticity and veracity of the orders they might receive from upstream. In the matter of a couple hours, D'Spayr could bring down the fortress-city with minimal bloodshed.
And if all that were to fail, he would unleash Emaris Staurqe's superhuman fury against the Warlord's forces.
That was the plan.
And it appeared that from the very start, things just were not going to work out.
There were two dozen armed sentries guarding the hooded, onyx maw of the tunnel leading beneath the perimeter wall into the city. They were rough men, a force of volunteer soldiers pulled from the lower ranks of the tradesman guilds and from the meanest urban districts within the fortress-city. Some were reformed criminals, some yet remained members of the criminal underworld, while others simply liked the opportunity their military service gave them to use their savage weaponry against other men. Regardless, they weren't, for the most part, inexperienced samaritans. They were fighters.
And all of them could see clearly as cats in the dark. That night vision was courtesy of a massive increase in rhodopsin in the photoreceptor cells in their eyes following indiscreet and unwanted experimentation conducted by combined effort of the Emperium's Ministry of Racial Alignment and the Ministry for Technological Development . That experimentation had been horribly inhumane and agonizing, but it had produced a troop of soldiers with the ability to see clearly in very low light... But that same ability forever cost those men the faculty of being able to live in normal daylight without burning out their optical nerves.
Recognizing their plight as an opportunity he could exploit, Kolag Y'phree had entrusted them with the guardianship of Niyaddour's subterranean realm.
The city had always been, since its very inception, a fortress. No matter what sociopolitical administration, religious order or military regime had taken control over the resources and the populace inside The City's battlements, Niyaddour had never evolved far from its roots as an armed citadel. It had barracks and armories within its walls to provide shelter and armaments for the soldiers protecting the food, mercantile goods, precious gems, rare minerals and the informational secrets of its rulers. As such, it was a place dedicated to developing and expanding upon the conceptual strategies and technologies of protective physical security. Relying on the natural advantages of terrain and climate was folly and belief in the invulnerability provided by older, legacy fortifications and protective systems was illusory. Dire myths and whispered stories about what happened to invaders who dared to breach Niyaddour's walls weren't frightful enough to scare away the greedy and the ambitious. If someone was determined to get inside the city, they weren't going to allow themselves to be deterred by technology that was old back when their parents were young. This wasn't just any city, this was Niyaddour. It was a beast.
D'Spayr had accumulated a great deal of experience with putting down beasts.
The tunnel defensive force was on edge, having been fed news of the heliar's earlier violent events that was rife with anecdotal accounts and unsubstantiated rumors. A lot of what they'd been told was pure fabrication. However, accounts of Grimmurmanthe's assault on The City had served to perturb and distress the troopers enough that they unintentionally had begun to allow their murky and dismal surroundings to eat away at their collective confidence. Though they were a relatively disciplined force, they weren't the most highly educated of combatants. Their knowledge of military and guerilla battle tactics was limited to what they'd directly experienced as conscriptees under Kolag Y'phree's command. They were accustomed to meeting force with force. Stealth fighting was not in their meager skill set. They'd signed on to fight for their Warlord against forces of invading pillagers, bandits, and criminal scavengers, mostly human-based threats --- not giant alien demons.
And there was certainly no way they were ready to confront the strategic education and battle experience of a former Knight in service to the Council of Free Territories, an Outland Marshal.
Two dozen men. As one man, they stirred in response to a mystifying, primally avatavistic disturbance in the dim light that danced at the edges of perception. It was jarring. To a man, they sensed rather than heard or felt the ghostly arrival of a sudden, unexpected presence, appearing inside the entrance gate at the mouth of the tunnel. A man encased in outmoded and slightly battered, silvery-gray armor astride the back of a large, armored reptile.
How had he gotten in? How had he and his beast managed to breach their defensive perimeter without making any noise? Why hadn't any alarms sounded?
"Listen and listen well," the Knight said, speaking with a firm, unswerving conviction. "I'm only going to say this once. The man whom you serve is not deserved of your diligence or your allegiance. You know this. To him, you are nothing more than intelligent guard dogs and you are expendable. I wish you no harm. No one has to die. Let me pass unopposed and none of you will come to any harm."
The Sergeant-At-Arms for the troop immediately responded, his voice firm and imbued with pride and confidence in the abilities of his men. There was respect in his response, but, too, there was an undeniable threat. "We have a duty here, in this place. We were given a trust. A purpose. We cling to no illusion of our worth to Kolag Y'phree and so we fight to satisfy our own honor, not the Warlord's. We have no quarrel with you unless you continue to invade our perimeter. You are but one man. We are many. Turn back, go, and we will not trouble you."
D'Spayr drew in a very audible deep breath, his regret at what surely must follow was palpable. He slowly rolled his helmeted head from one shoulder to the other, his jaw-guard scraping lightly against the shoulder-protecting pauldron covers. He was limbering up, releasing tension.
"Let. Me. Pass."
The Sergeant-At-Arms shrugged as he answered. "No."
Deciding further conversation was pointless, The Knight swiftly drew one of his particle beam disruptor pistols and fired three times in rapid succession. The crackling, blistering beams of coherent destructive brilliance ripped across the distance between himself and the tunnel guards faster than the blink of an eye...
Two men went down, blown off from their feet, in a bright shower of erupting sparks that hissed loudly as fountains of blood devolved into pink steam.
Loosing an ear-shattering roar, the Veranus Halodean lunged determinedly at the troop with astonishing speed. Atop the beast's muscular back, D'Spayr had drawn and activated the lethal energy field around the twin blades of his shatter-sword.
The tunnel's interior exploded into disorganized turmoil as the affronted unit of soldiers stampeded at the Knight, firing their own weaponry. The powdery layer of dust and loose dirt covering the rocky floor was launched upwards into an eye-stinging, billowing pall that swiftly expanded to cloak the frenetic movements of man and animal alike. Visibility shrank to flashes and slices of dim imagery from which the contesting warriors could only haphazardly deduce the positions of their enemies. In these conditions, D'Spayr had the distinct advantage...
His cybernetic, multi-environ combat armor's sensory augmentation field emitters allowed the Knight to "see" in even the most optically-limited conditions. Actual visual input was sometimes relegated to secondary priority by the heuristically-adaptable, genegineered, tactical targeting and threat analysis computing system. D'Spayr was provided with a 360-degree, motion-reactive, 3D proximity map of his surroundings courtesy of sonar vision. This process used a complex adaptable algorithm to interpret aural-scanned physical data and spatial components to then convert that information into ocular imagery fed directly into his occipital lobe's visual cortex. Moreover, the strategic analytics physical protection system could also, to a limited extent, partially predict the most likely paths of oncoming motion for those objects moving in his proximity. The end result of the combination of those two enhancements meant that the Knight could see in the dark or when when his native vision was severely occluded. He could also sequentially predict the likelihood of his opponents' next movements and potential angles of attack before they made them. The exoskeletal, combat-enhanced mech-system allowed D'Spayr the option of knowing everything going on around him.
The only drawback to those enhancements was that, when he was using those features, the physical strength enhancement the armor provided him was lessened by a factor of one third. And, too, he could not make use of the sonar vision for a lengthy duration because of the power drain. But D'Spayr's own naturally evolved hyper-dense musculature helped make up for most of that shortcoming.
And then there was the fact that he was riding on one of the last of Teshiwahur's largest, most dangerous land predators.
Flesh ripped, bones were broken, blood spurted, bodies fell... Inside of thirty-six seconds, seventeen of the attacking tunnel guard had been either slain or immobilized by extensive, crippling wounds.
Seven men left...
It was then that D'Spayr was startled by an abrupt and ominous change in the Halodean's behavior. The beast's behavior shifted from that of a ferocious, raging attack stance with which the Knight was familiar, to a wild and intemperate panic. The dragon-lizard arrested its forward charge so suddenly and so clumsily it nearly bucked him off from it. It danced first to the left and then to the right and back again, searching for physical relief from whatever was the source of its perturbation. It was as if the mighty lizard had been unexpectedly sprayed in its face with some searingly acidic spume from which it desperately was trying to escape. The Knight felt a growing unease and dread begin to spread in his own chest as he realized that whatever it was the fierce beast sensed was sufficiently vile and dangerous enough for it to need to disengage from slaughtering its prey to seek safety someplace else. This was not in any way a typical response his steed. So far as D'Spayr had ever seen, the Halodean was as near to being as absolutely fearless as any living creature could be. D'Spayr urgently fought to calm the frightened and agitated animal...
Then he saw them.
His steed's distress matched the moment when a homicidal mob of hulking, otherworldly automatons, golems cast by the Machineries of Witchery, appeared.
* * *
If she had been a religious person, she would have thought she was being punished for her sins. But she didn't actually believe in such things. For that to happen, for her to be singled out for her deeds and misdeeds and treated appropriately according to their severity, the Universe would have to be aware of her existence and actually care about her. She would have to accept that there was a cosmic sentience that watched over her and judged her for her actions. She could not allow herself to participate in such a deceit. She could not believe that was the case. Religion had no place in the Withered Land. The Long Death had stolen any solace and any value it had once provided away from the diverse populace of broken and decaying Teshiwahur. There had been pain and darkness enough in her existence so far to more than engage any levying of celestial judgment. And she knew that such an exalted being would find her to be a gross and pitiable, though unrepentant, example of humanity. No, she would not entertain such thoughts. She just accepted that the world was hard, harsh and violent and the best any person could do was to make sure that if they did an evil to another, they committed that atrocity for higher, purer reasons than those involving their own self interests. Rae'vynn Wyyng was gradually emerging from the suffocating gray fog that had enveloped her after the destruction of the Aerieakon and her unforeseen reunion with the living representation of her life's greatest regret --- though she had thought of him often, she hadn't wanted to ever see Adam Wilder again. She felt like there was a cold hole in the center of her chest.
Good. That was the place, then, that she would hide her fury. She had tried her best and she had failed. Her life was in a shambles. Her crusade had been a failure. Her personal code of honor had been revealed to be a sham.
All that was left to her was the way of the sword and the gun. So be it.
Rae'vynn focused once more on the motley assemblage within the jetellin's vast cargo hold. She took a deep breath and caught the attention of the tall and sinewy, cloaked, aristocratic noblewoman leaning against a stack of container bins. She was engaged in what looked to be an intense conversation with Durkka-Jan and Vandessha'Jai. People treated her with both camaraderie and subtle deference. It was apparent she was important to the group. She recalled the woman had given her name as "Nygeia" and she was a compatriot of the Traveler in Red.
The woman nodded to her and waved her over. Durkka-Jan and Vandessha'Jai took that action as their cue to amble over to where the mechanoid jetellin pilot, Akkitus Orthwaine, and the synthetic female bio-droid, Pnoom-Aig, were working with a trio of linked computer consoles.
"What can I do to help?" Rae'vynn asked with typical bluntness, avoiding any attempt at conversational pleasantries. She was momentarily surprised to discover that, though the rangy pirate captain was considered a tall woman even by Teshiwahurian standards, Nygeia was taller than her by a full head. She exuded an aura of authority and intelligence, a quality of icy toughness, and yet there was a personableness, a charisma, that drew people to her. She was a natural leader. Rae'vynn felt herself wanting to get into the woman's good graces.
"I don't know," Nygeia said. "Other than scheme, lie, manipulate and kill, what CAN you do?"
Rae'vynn was taken back by the response.
While she spoke, Nygeia's forthrightness didn't spare Rae'vynn's feelings. "Don't misunderstand. I am certainly, given the mistakes and excesses of my own clouded past, in NO position to judge you. I can understand that, at the time, you chose to do what you deemed necessary to survive and that you were sometimes forced into making decisions and taking actions that might have been morally questionable. I get it. But all most others of us can see is that, despite your intelligence and common sense, and in spite of your sense of duty, you've made a real mess of things. Frankly, none of us, and that includes the few remaining members of your old crew, know what it is we can trust you with."
Rae'vynn unflinchingly took a single step closer to the Princess-Sorceror and said, "You can trust I believe the Withered Land can and should be a better place for all of us than it is. You can trust that the only allegiance I have is to Justice. You can trust that I will stand firm in the face of any and all enemies. You can all trust that I will stand with you to the end, even though it may cost me my life and my freedom. My enemy is Tyranny in all its forms."
"Oh, my dear Captain, I truly believe all of that. I do. But what about the things you're willing to do for all that? What cost are you willing to pay? And how many of your friends and comrades will you sacrifice in the course of your crusade? At some point, amid all that fire and passion, the main part of your loyalty needs to be dedicated to protecting the people who put themselves in harm's way to fight at your side," Nygeia said. "For some of us, it is not so much about the Cause as it is about the person. It appears to me that, somewhere along the way, you forgot that."
"What would you have of me, then?"
Nygeia pursed her lips and ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth as she considered the Captain's question. Her gaze was direct and her eyes were clear, free from the turmoil of emotional judgment. She very quickly came to a decision.
"Lumynn."
The lean-muscled, adventurous former monk left the table-monitor screen onto which the navigational map was projected and quickly joined the Princess' side.
"You, Vandessha'Jai and the Captain here should join with Adam Wilder and Ryonne to finalize the reconnaissance strategy for our landing assault." With those instructions, Nygeia turned and walked away, her cloak fluttering and swishing like a flow of living darkness, signalling she had no interest in continuing with further discussion.
Rae'vynn couldn't help thinking the words: "Imperious bitch".
Lumynn gave Captain Wyyng an appraising stare, one eyebrow raised, and shook his head as he said aloud, "How awkward is this going to get? Are you two going to play well together? I'm not interested in having to referee between the two of you. Besides, I've a firm impression that if The Traveler decides he's going to do you harm, there'd be little I could do to stop him."
"You'd be right about that," Rae'vynn said. "And there'd be damn little I could do, either. But I know Wilder and I know how he prioritizes his tasks. There'll be no contention between him and I so long as we're on task. It's the aftermath where things could get ... messy. So, that being said, what is our objective?"
"Well, the element of surprise is completely out of the question. I mean, look at us. We're in a gigantic aerial vehicle in a relatively clear sky with the early morning's sun to our aft. Even were we to make use of our cloaking technology, that wouldn't hide our ground-based shadow nor would it hide vibrational energy aura of our engine signature," Lumynn mused ruefully. "Then add to that the fact that The City's Skycraft Air Traffic Control Defense System has this craft's frequency transponder and infrared signature on-record, and well, let's just say they're probably expecting our arrival."
"Then what are we doing here? Shouldn't we land, mask or hide the ship as best we can, and then launch the insertion team's operation over land?"
"We could do that, but we'd waste a lot of time doing so," Lumynn said. "The Warlord's forces know we're out in the territorial wilds. They know our mission was to go to Peravendath. It only makes sense they'd expect us to return. Trying an end-run around aerial security and sneaking into The City would give away our intentions, make us look suspicious. Besides, if we made landing and dispatched a ground team, we'd just about insure we'd be discovered thereafter when we tried breaching the City's external perimeter security. No, a direct approach is best."
"We fly right in and disembark at the Terminal's landing field," Rae'vynn concluded. "And from there, after being processed per normal procedure, we offer ourselves for debriefing while the insertion team splits off from us and covertly makes its way back into The City's interior. Good and fine. So what -- or WHO -- are our targets?"
"That is yet to be determined. The situation is, shall we say, rather fluid at this moment."
Rae'vynn expressed her disapproval behind a bark of humorless laughter. "How in all the Galactic Hells you people have managed to stay alive this long is a wonder to me. Shouldn't you have some way or someone do principal reconnaissance when advancing through hostile or unsecured territory?"
Smiling, Lumynn suddenly clapped his hands together and his manner became less cautious, bordering on the jovial. "So, we're in agreement! It's decided. You'll take point on the landing team. The most dangerous job on the mission. Why not, right? I mean, after all, you're already pretty much dead..."
* * *
Arvenall Dampiko was surprised to be looking at the razor-sharp, business-end of Blood Champion Harridus Bryllaniean's sonic dissembler axe. As First Legionnaire and Regimental Commander of Warlord Kolag Y'phree's Urban Counter-Insurgency Defense Reserve, more popularly referred to as "the Sand Kings", Harridus Bryllaniean was in command of a low-tech unit of experienced Centurian-Rangers who were a protection guard tasked with strengthening the manned perimeter defenses of ancient Niyaddour. A tall, native-born Niyaddouran approaching middle-age, a scion from one of The City's oldest founding clans, Bryllaniean was a dour, no-nonsense professional soldier who had once faithfully served The World-Father's Emperium ... until he'd found their methods of brutal governance over the Far Territories beyond the Forever Plain to be morally intolerable. Like many Teshiwahurians, the Blood Champion was a bit of a xenophobe, mistrustful of anyone and anything to which he'd never before been exposed, but unlike many, he could quickly adapt to and engage with foreign cultures, customs and peoples.
But he had zero tolerance for liars, thieves and spies. He knew who Arvenall Dampiko was and could identify him on sight. He considered the rogue Warlord to be the embodiment of all three of his least favorite kinds of people. So seeing Dampiko unexpectedly inside the walls of Niyaddour, especially while The City was under siege, and knowing the man was a sworn enemy of Kolag Y'phree, whom Bryllaniaen served, presented the Blood Champion ample grounds to draw his deadly sonic dissembler axe and press its glowing, vibrating blade against Dampiko's throat.
The thing that had kept Bryllaniean from severing Dampiko's head from off his shoulders was the end of the muzzle of Dampiko's short-barreled, multi-chambered pistol pressed into the underside of the Blood Champion's chin. Stalemate.
The First Legionnaire had to give credit where credit was due. The rogue Warlord was a formidable warrior.
For his part, Mikaas Drem, his every muscle trembling with tension, was standing in an aggressive fencer's stance with his curve-bladed, molecular-scrambler scimitar drawn as he confronted a trio of soldiers in dull olive and crimson-hued tactical body-armor. They did not advance on him, but neither did they present themselves as overly concerned with resisting any impulses to murder him. They were disciplined fighters and they calmly awaited a sign from their commanding officer.
"Might I suggest we concede our collective dangerousness, gentlemen, and perhaps agree on a more mutually profitable course of action?" Dampiko said.
"You do not belong here, Crucifixer," Bryllaniean hissed. "I know not by what subterfuge you were able to gain entry to our city, but it was for naught. These are not your lands. Do not insult us by trying to buy our allegiance."
"Wouldn't dream of it, Centurion. I am simply willing to provide an alternative to the awkward and unproductive situation in which we presently find ourselves. Killing one another would not provide favorable outcomes to any of our problems."
"No, but I admit I would die happy knowing I'd taken your head and cut you apart before my life ended," Bryllaniean said.
Dampiko frowned and made a show of more closely regarding the First Legionnaire. "You're holding a lot of anger towards someone who should, I think, be a stranger to you. Have we met before?"
"Enough of this. Sergeant, kill his partner," Bryllaniean ordered through clenched teeth.
Raising his technologically-enhanced scimitar, Drem steeled himself for an explosion of merciless mayhem...
A sound like the tinkling of many glass bells from inside a deep, stone well abruptly chimed from all sides, surrounding the tense group of men as the air around them thickened and sparkled darkly...
Fianaxis, leader of The Arbiters, blinked into visibility. An impressive presence, she towered threateningly over even the tallest human in the group by half a body's length and the gaze with which she regarded them was full of anger and distaste.
"If you wouldn't mind...," Catching The Woman's gaze, Arvenall Dampiko prompted her past his dry, constricted throat.
Like man-shaped bubbles of damp ash, Blood Champion Harridus Bryllaniean and three of his troops from the Sand Kings counter-insurgency defense reserve were each molecularly dismantled, losing their material coherency and popping into nothingness. They were gone in a single blink of a madman's eye.
Arvenall Dampiko fussily re-arranged his clothing and armor as he regained his composure. Mikaas Drem lowered his sword with trembling hands.
"Conclude your affairs as quickly as you can and see to it you retrieve what I demanded you secure from this place," she said, a cruel edge to her usually unemotional tonality, "Grimmurmanthe will no longer patiently wait to feed upon these cattle. If you are caught here when he attacks, he will feed upon you as surely and as unhesitatingly as he will upon every other living thing inside these walls. Our forbearance is at its end."
The Woman disappeared.
"We seriously need to get moving, my lord," Drem said. "Time is swiftly running out."
Without further conversation, the two conspirators jogged to the stairwell nearest the bulwark tower on the fortress wall's inner battlement.
* * *