Syngemma Krede stopped her march long enough to rub the muscles at the base of her aching back. Moving her hands to her hips, she rocked gracefully from side-to-side, luxuriating in the moment she took to loosen her thighs and calves and to draw in a long cool breath of morning's air. Her mouth was dry and her eyes felt grit-filled and strained from dashing through the sand saturated night winds, peering into the dark. She and Taran'Gaohnge had literally been on the run for most the night and into the dawn, covering as much distance as they could away from the Nahztreme tank-carrier they'd abandoned along the Uffraza Trail that traversed Tuwerbleek Atun. Away from the attack of the alien airship. Though they both were in superb physical condition, even for the hardy, wandering mercenary class of the Withered Land, the effort had cost them. They were thirsty and they were tired. It felt good to take rest from the sustained exertion.
It made matters a lot more tolerable, too, that the pair were doing so in the vast, cool shadow of the towering Totem At Kyvree'Damuneth, an oasis of fresh water and plentiful, lush plant life.
The oasis was renowned as a territorially-independent sanctuary zone where it was forbidden for warring tribes or armies or even criminal organizations to prey upon one another or enact blood vendettas. It was a Holy Place, sacred ground, and its keepers would not permit violence to be committed there. Once one entered into the geographic boundaries of Kyvree'Damuneth, a visitor or refugee would be exempt from predation or arrest until they'd left the area. As a rare natural environmental oasis, the nomadic tribespeople of Pex'Insava counted upon the area being free of political and military influences, a place where anyone and everyone could take respite -- it was, by necessity due to the desiccation of the lunar prairie, a place vital to human survival in the moon's rough, unforgiving landscape.
At the easternmost perimeter of the area's north point, there sat a huge man-made monument erected atop a five story-high, lozenge-shaped stone kurgan. The kurgan was at the foot of a larger mountainous mesa. The massive cenotaph resembled a broken wagon's wheel partly encaged by a pair of concentric stone rings. At the center where the spokes of the wheel would normally have converged, an ornately carved, stylized representation of a fierce coiled serpent appeared to pull the giant rocky gearwheel together. Thick ropy vines and entwined strands of free-growing ivy draped from crevices in the stone sprocket while grassy patches of lichen nestled in the nooks and crannies of some of the carved bas-relief details. It was a potent and imposing sight large enough, wherever it was not fragmentarily masked by the bulk of the mesa behind it, to be seen for leagues in any direction.
This was the legendary place where the hero Alphus Ceryndall had, in many ages past, buried the mythical "Tome of Blood", hiding it, and thus its potentially deadly secrets, from Dyre-Lord Dreidax Tarathi, Prince of Chaos.
Syngemma, unconcerned about myths and fables, strolled wearily over the pebble-strewn edge of the nearest tributary pool and knelt, cupping the palms of her hands, to gather a mouthful of water... Behind her, she heard Taran'Gaohnge muttering softly to himself. He sounded distracted and slightly melancholy.
"So much happened here, so much hope and yet so many dead miracles, so many unfulfilled dreams and broken dreamers, so many names and faces, so much promise lost..., did you know, did any of you know --- what could and would happen, treaties broken and lost, blood spilled... did you think it would turn out how it did? So sorry, so very, very sorry, puppets, you were all just puppets, pawns of Fate and Destiny, Victims of Terror and War, and all for what? So very sorry...," he said from between clenched teeth, mournfully shaking his head from side to side as he walked towards the water's edge.
Syngemma had stood up from the shore as he meandered past, checking to verify he was not in any distress, but was instead merely experiencing yet another one of his odd, but strangely routine, semi-fugue dissociative episodes. Taran took three strides past her before he noticed she was not turning back to the water, that she was not moving at all and still facing the view behind him. Taran arrested his own forward momentum and then, too, turned around to face the direction from which he'd just come.
There were eleven of them standing silently amid the tall grass and brambly reeds. Tattered burlap cloaks of burgundy hue inscribed with blue-black runic sigils rustling in the mid-morning's desultory breeze,unveiling to reveal the articulated body tactical body-armor beneath. Not a uniform, not the regimented trappings of allegiance or of office, but an exoskeletal power-suit comprised of scavenged parts. With pistols, swords, and war-axes. They hadn't been standing there before.
Shachtferadi'im.
"Careful," the Blind Watchman admonished the swordswoman standing at his side, "Where you can see one, twice as many more are hiding nearby, masked by The Shimmer..."
Shimmer? Syngemma shook her head and gave Taran a quizzical look.
Frowning, the Watchman said, "I swear, your former masters should be ashamed of the gaping holes in your education... Some indigenous ethnic groups who are the original settlers of a given geophysical area, in contrast to other extra-territorial groups that migrated to settle, occupy or colonize that same region, possess genetically evolved bio-talents allowing them, for short periods of time, to access mathematical hyperphysical spatial expanses, other Planes of Being, through which they can move. 'The Shimmer' is the name given a localized alter-dimensional plane outside our visible Reality to which the Shachtferadi'im briefly and intermittently have access."
"Other Planes of Being... Outside?"
"Yes. They find it to be a tremendous advantage when they gather for their hunts or engage in warfare," Taran said, his manner impassive.
"Marvelous," Syngemma said, her whispered response rife with fatalism.
"Not really," Taran replied, not acknowledging the sarcasm implicit in Syngemma's response. "The Shimmer has created a dampening effect on the practical evolution of their society. Whereas our expectations, as outsiders, are for them to have developed into a somewhat coarse and unsophisticated nomadic culture with its people being harsh and brutishly pragmatic, the truth is their exposure to higher dimensions has resulted in them developing into an abstractionist social fellowship that is more transcendental and more metaphysically inclined. For the most part, the Shachtferadi'im eschew what would normally be a business-like, solution-oriented and results-driven indigenous primitivism for a more mystical collectivist mindset. Essentially, given a choice between drinking water from a pond and observing the motion of water in a pond, they'll probably choose studying the water's hydrodynamic properties -- and somehow derive from that the concept of God."
"What is it with you? Is there some particular reason you go out of your way to make my head ache?" Syngemma quipped. "If they decide to try and kill us, will any of what you told me help me to stay alive?"
Taran sighed. "Your warrior's skills are more than sufficient to keep you among the living. Quite a while ago, I decided to take personal responsibility for your educational growth. I'm going to breach the walls of your stubborn, willful ignorance if it's the last thing I do."
"You're my partner, not my father."
"And I thank all the deities in the heavens for that fact everyday."
Syngemma's eyes narrowed and her full lips wrinkled disapprovingly in response to the Blind Watchman's rejoinder. She turned her attention back to the eerily motionless band of nomadic warriors.
A thickly built swordsman slowly stepped forward from the group towards her and Taran. Staring at them, he didn't speak for a long, uncomfortable moment as he took their measure. He was oddly dispassionate and not at all as fearsome as his attire hinted he would be. When he did, at last, speak, his deep tones and vocal cadence were one of someone unused to polite oratory.
"You are not Moonborn, either of you. Your roots are of the Motherworld. Travelers, but obviously fighters. Yet you are not soldiers nor bounty-killers enthralled to the World-Father. And you are not territorial law enforcement. Your allegiances appear to be ... unfixed. So why are you here?"
"Why is it any of your concern? Supposedly all are welcome here..." Syngemma said.
"Do you really think it best to adopt an adversarial attitude?" the swordsman countered.
"We're thirsty," Syngemma said, shrugging. Hearing this, Taran 's head tilted to one side and he stared down at his booted feet, muttering to himself.
Considering her response, the swordsman blinked once and then smiled nastily. His lips wrinkled and he uttered a sharp clicking noise... the rest of the Shachtferadi'im warriors took a single purposeful step forwards.
Syngemma drew in a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, subtly shifting her balance to achieve a proper combat stance, but remembering to keep her hands away from her weapons. Although it was popular knowledge that the oasis was a place of sanctuary, her natural inclinations in the present situation were to consider every possibility that the strangers she encountered were likely to be enemies.
The swordsman continued to speak. "Oh, I see ... We are strangers and we are many. We pose a threat. But you will probably insist you are merely wanderers, questing souls allowing Destiny to guide you on your path as you pass through Kyvree'Damuneth. You serve no master, you have no secret agendas. You have no quarrel with us. This place is just a way-station where, for a moment, you can rest your weary limbs and draw sustenance from the cool waters. That is what you want us to, need us to, believe, yes?"
"Look, whoever you think we may be or whatever it is you may think is going on, let me assure you...," Syngemma began, making an effort to speak slowly, while adopting a tone and manner that worked very hard at being reassuringly inoffensive.
"No, let me assure you," the swordsman interrupted, a dark edge to his voice, "We are not ignorant Elder Nation savages. We are aware of the Gorgahnun Coalition's violent incursions against the Hegemonic Emperium. Regardless the Rules of Conduct governing the sanctuary status of these Holy Grounds, we will not be tolerant of clandestine trickery perpetrated by spies in the employ of the homeworld's Omniperator Cosmoterius and his illegally declared 'Third Cosmic Offensive'..."
"Spies? Seriously? Have you taken a good look at us? Do we appear to be the type of timid, faceless individuals who could easily blend in with a crowd? I was led to believe the best spies were pretty much invisible..."
The Shachtferadi'im group leader favored the warrior-woman with a look that was all doubt and suspicion.
He said, "For all practical purposes, Pex'Insava is virtually infested these days with non-native and Offworld strangers of all stripes and varieties. The atypical and the peculiar are now the norm as opposed to how things were in times past."
"Ke'ispar chul-tek re'barra tawn," Taran interjected loudly, disrupting the swordsman's tirade.
The swordsman's eyes grew wide and there was an audible collective gasp from his compatriots, who reacted with startled, solemn astonishment.
"Xhip'na, fahnn-lah, ke'ispenai tawn-pok," he replied after a moment. "How is this possible? You speak the language of the First Order, the words of the Elders? Are you one of the Shamanet?"
The Blind Watchman nodded and, after slowly crossing his arms across his muscular torso with the extended index finger of each hand pointing upwards, bowed deeply while intoning, "Taran'Gaohnge, a traveling scholar and philosopher, and little else, from distant Veranthius on the shores of Teshiwahur's Bay of Schymediera in the southeast of Qundin. My companion is Syngemma Krede, a former Star Legion military officer, a former contract-enforcer for a criminal syndicate whose name we need not mention, and now, my friend and bodyguard. I can guarantee: we have nothing to do with the World-Father's Third Cosmic Offensive..."
There was hushed muttering from amongst the swordsman's band of battle-brothers as they considered Taran's concession of identity.
"Should I kneel, bow or curtsy or something, too?" Syngemma whispered from out the corner of her mouth.
"You do, and I swear I'll stab you in the throat myself," Taran replied under his breath.
"Fine," she said softly, venting her exasperation. "Just trying to help. Forget I asked."
The swordsman held up one of his hands, encased in a scratched and impact-weathered bronze gauntlet, and motioned for his squad to compose themselves.
"I am Second Commander Jungmoar'Toth," he said. "And we are the last vestiges of Ninth Troop Advarserryan, late of Pex'Insava's Deputized United Tribes Territorial Legions. We are the last militia survivors of the Gorgahnun campaign against the city of Allius Karaqim, in the north quarter."
"Allius Karaqim has fallen?" Syngemma asked.
Jungmoar'Toth nodded his assent. "It has. Five solar heliars past. It's a ruined mess now. Its few remaining defenders have been scattered across the Wastes searching for safe haven. We survived that bloody slaughter and we wisely and happily self-terminated our Emperium Legion military commissions -- we never wanted to fight under the World-Father's banner, anyways. We are now what we were born to be, what we should always have stayed as, Shachtferadi'im Free Men."
"If you don't mind me asking, and in the interests of full transparency, how many of Ninth Troop Advarserryan remain?" Taran prompted.
"Ah, so you know about The Shimmer...," Jungmoar'Toth smiled, expressing his approval of the Blind Watchman's intellectual acumen. "There are twice the number of loyal soldiers you see now still active and combat-ready, but currently at-watch, aware of this conversation, in the dimensional slide-space."
"Thirty-three men total... So that would mean that only about a third of your regiment's original troop compliment survived the events at Allius Karaqim, correct?" Taran deduced.
Jungmoar'Toth nodded.
"Apologies for the loss of your brothers," Syngemma offered, unsure of what to say, but feeling the need to speak and let the swordsman know that she, as a fellow soldier, shared in his post-battle remorse. "The life of a warrior can be miserably hard and heartbreakingly short."
He shrugged, his face expressionless. "It is the weight we bear willingly to protect others who cannot themselves take arms in battle. If the Cause is Just, the sword is Just."
"So it has been said... Free men, are you? Not going to be much call for humans of that stripe if the Gorgahnun Coalition wrest control of Pex'Insava away from the Emperium. I'd imagine their next step would to be to initiate their Dominion-Intellect to Psyche-thrall all sentient bio-organisms," Syngemma said.
"We will not let that happen. Neither will we further allow the World-Father to resume his further enslavement of our people under the flag of the Hegemonic Emperium."
"I respect that. We, too, have little interest in serving as cannon-fodder for the Emperium, but, meanwhile, we're especially aware our responsibilities as fighters to Pex'Insava and its populace. I know, that's an odd position for a sellsword to have, but there it is... You and your men look like you're on the road to some destination or another," Syngemma said. "I realize it may be awkward and present uncomfortable familiarity between us, but perhaps we have a mutual destination and can travel together. At very least, we can share knowledge and keep one another informed as to what's going on during the chaos of this alien expropriation. It's not much, but it's an idea, anyways... So, if you don't mind my asking, what's your next destination?"
"Abyssium," the former Second Commander of Ninth Troop said. "We're on the road to Abyssium. The plan is to meet up with other Shachtferadi'im warriors and defend what remains of our moon from further alien terrorism and then serve the Revolution."
Taran's usually impassive bearing changed at hearing that. He half-turned towards Syngemma and said, "Abyssium. Imagine that."
* * *
There had been an undefinable something, something dark and oppressive, haunting the edges of human perception since a few hours past dawn that morning, and it teased the edges of consciousness and distracted the people in the town in such a way as to make them continually check behind themselves and to look over their shoulders. It was a spectral disturbance, that sense of dark expectation hinting at the approach of a portentous supernatural force, like an unclean ripple in the fabric of Reality rolling in towards the isolated, hard-bitten community. Like an oncoming wave, it grew, at first feeling chimerical and surreal and then deepening, becoming denser, more substantial and more intrusive until it was an invisible electricity that danced along the surface of the skin, burning... a fierce storm gathering in the morning's sky, stalking with predatory intent.
The town's crude and callow citizenry collectively knew, without conversation, the phenomenon they all experienced was reflective of something bad.
When the few lean and feral, scraggly creatures that inhabited the aridwadi gathered together and began a sudden hysteria-driven stampede through thetown's streets, everyone there knew someone had thrown open the doors to Hell.
A flight of external perimeter drones picked them up as a collective mass when they exited a telescoping transit-shunt portal at the base's southwestern edge, near the foot of the first and largest hillock leading away into the Wastes. The security grid's particle-watch telemetry had not registered the tunnel point-lock before the opening of the transit-shunt, so their arrival was a complete surprise. The shunt, a distance-collapsing dimensional doorway resembling a localized wormhole, abruptly appeared as a hole in the open air just above the horizon and they spilled out from inside its depths without fanfare, moving like a rapidly oncoming tide of hammered steel, battle-scarred armor and razor-honed edged weaponry.
There was no mistaking their intent.
They came riding out from the portal in a line, two riders at a time, side-by-side, and were silhouetted by the emerald-lime glare of the late-morning's sun. On their approach, despite the fact their numbers were not quite as large as their collective energy displacement would suggest, the canter of their choreographed procession shook the ground and birthed a cloud of dry ashen grit that spread out like a billowing cloak behind them.
They weren't trying to be at all stealthy. They weren't afraid to be seen.
The threat implicit in their sudden arrival almost bore the flavors of arrogance and insolence -- they were a dark and solemn sickle of Judgment, destined to be swayed or delayed by no human hand. Atop a tall cavalry lance, a dark and tattered banner not seen in many long solar orbital heliars flapped in the dust-flecked breeze.
The banner was inscribed with the image of a counter-clockwise facing white crescent, its extraordinarily long bottom lip curling to the left and bisected by a single perpendicular, hollow-centered red rectangle... the abominable mark of Dreidax Terathi, the bloated reptilian Dyre-Lord of Chaos.
The Wannyshe were once again riding wild across the land, undeniably bringing with them a plague of savagery and slaughter.
The Emperium military consulate compound known as Swordphont 107 immediately went on full combat alert.
Pragkus Rehdgraice, the Lunar Response Brigade Annex Chief-of-Station at Swordphont 107, sat in his command-point medial hub, physically connected into the base's defensive neural-net, augmenting its strategic analytics processors. He'd expected there might be blowback from the missions on which he'd sent the Nahztreme and the Knighted Outland Marshals, but he hadn't expected it so soon nor to be from a source as legendarily menacing as what he now beheld. The Wannyshe, the Riders of Dreidax Terathi...
Hell and damn.
Redgraice was not a warrior either by trade, training nor by disposition and seeing the sudden approach of a cavalry composed by alterhuman bio-deviant, cyberflesh killers was not an eventuality for which he could ever be prepared.
The Wannyshe were, to most citizens of the Emperium, a myth, an ugly allegorical fable told to untried, innocent army recruits to keep them loyal and docile on the eve of any major military campaign. They and their supposed Overlord, Dreidax Terathi, were a fabricated parable passed along from generation to generation of soldier illustrating the penalty for straying from the virtues of soldierly honor and loyalty. They were an example a good man would avoid emulating. In the Real World, such beings as they could obviously not possibly truly exist. Right? But it was that assumption of fantasy that was the lie, the belief that the legend was nothing but mythology was the untruth. They existed. And they were born of human hands, crafted by sick human minds, created by dark and amoral science. A twisted form of Burssurken. Synthedroids. Metasynths. And the dreaded criminal Syrrus Drehdfynitor, himself a mistake of evolution, was their true master. Each cadaverous, semi-spectral warrior was astride an eight-legged, insect-cum-mammal mutant hybrid with partly-visible cybernetic enhancements implanted throughout its armored carapace. The Riders were carnivorous carrion-eaters, tireless, amoral and murderous, driven by the scent of spilled blood into ferocious homicidal rages. They were cunning, organized, fearless and they were each almost immortal -- loyal only to a mutant madman who had rewritten and re-interpreted the legend of the demigod Dreidax Terathi as God of a New Religion to which his outcast Riders subscribed.
And they virulently hated the human family to which they were denied inclusion.
Gravitistatic ion pulse barriers some four hundred meters out from the center of the base went online at full power, creating a twelve story-high, half-dome shield that encircled and encased the military consulate compound. At the base's outer perimeter, a field of multi-sensor integrated, pressure-sensitive explosive land mines came online. At the base's front gate and at the duo of vehicular runways piercing the camp perimeter, the central network activated a labyrinth of laser-wall anti-personnel fencing to shield against unauthorized, unencoded mechanical incursion.
But these were The Riders. History had recorded their campaign against the titanium-armored Mound-Ziggurats of the war-mongering Altejasso Fellspawn nation, a rebelliously defiant republic battling the dominance of the Emperium, on the planet Ungrym Optimek, the second planet in Teshiwahur's solar system. In direct conflict, each forty story-tall Mound-Ziggurat had firepower enough to decimate a Extrasolar Navy Star Destroyer, yet The Wannyshe had stormed each of the rectangular-tiered edifices and slaughtered a thousand of its defiantly mutinous defenders despite their mighty technological armaments. And they lost not so much as one of their phantasmagoric cavalry soldiers.
It was highly unlikely the defenses of Swordphont107 would do anything more than irritate the already barbarous detachment of mounted lancers.
Rehdgraice only had seven actual soldiers, experienced tactical operations field officers, under his command. The rest of the staffers at Swordphont 107 were just that -- staffers: four external operations field agents, nine data collection analysts, three data archivists, a networking systems computer administrator who also served as the base's all-around electrician, three mechanics at the vehicular motor pool, a vehicle transport captain who doubled as the remote aerial camera drone's pilot, and the five people who made up the kitchen crew. Of that group, other than the TacOps soldiers, only about half a dozen of them had any experience at all using weaponry.
This... to stand against five dozen undead, mutant, cybernetically-enhanced, immortal cavalry troopers.
On seeing the Riders, on realizing what they were and what their advance against Swordphont 107 meant, Pragkus Rehdgraice did the one thing anyone who knew him could easily predict he'd do... He panicked.
"Security teams on full alert, prepare for enemy incursion! This is an maximum prejudice defensive action! Target and eliminate anyone and everyone who try to get in past our perimeter walls. Get networking support to route all extraneous power to weapons' defenses and get those the anti-personnel ion cannons online right now!"
"We're under attack? From whom? That squad out there doesn't look like they're local anti-Emperium liberation forces. And what about here inside the Ops Center?" one of the intelligence analysts asked. "The Nahztreme aren't on-site to protect us...!"
"We can't count on any help from Tarwook and the Nahztreme. We're on our own!"
"On our own? Those soldiers don't look human... Is that assault force coming at us who I THINK they are?" another analyst bleated, his voice filled with alarm. "They can't be who I'm thinking, right? Are those guys outside the damned Wannyshe, the frell'bruggen Riders of Dreidax Terathi? I didn't think they really existed! What the hell have you gotten us into, Rehdgraice?"
"Everyone listen up! Begin sanitization procedures! I want this place cleaned of anything they can use!" Rehdgraice bellowed, his voice cracking as he struggled to contain his anxiety. "Don't bother with transfer protocols --- we're not going to have time for that. Categorize data by Low, Moderate and High Risk, and then subject whatever seems most important to Binary wipe/Overwrite, working backwards from High to Low. Hard copy manuscript data gets burnt, all of it! Any and all archived optical files are to be erased or deleted. Physical hard drives are magni-scanned and scrambled and if you don't have time to do that, then smash them with hammers! Move, people! Get it done!"
The first volley of wide-bore, mobile ion-mortar blasts hit the east-wing of the furthest perimeter wall and the sound was thunderous as the condensed ion-packets slammed into and through the base's defensive screens to smash into the battlements... One of the conductive power terminals atop its roost-column blew up. Base staff members caught outdoors ran for cover as slagged metal, still aflame, fell from the sky. A three story-high wall of cinders and smoking, flaming debris erupted into the air, the ash cloud partially blocking the view from that vantage point.
In response, members of the Swordphont 107 security force dispatched to defend that section of the compound loosed round after blistering round of incendiary percussion blast-bundles at the approaching line of mounted riders. Seated at the command-console for the tripod-mounted, anti-personnel ion cannons, one of the base's Star Legion Militia officers frantically input attack vector projections into the cannon's analytics program where the weapon's Artificial Intelligence extrapolated the trajectory of its next set of targets. In just a few seconds, the cannon resighted past the base perimeter and fired again...
A trio of defenders who'd adopted a perch atop the main building's Widow's Walk-style cage-enclosure unleashed a veritable hornet's swarm of target-seeking, intelligent mini-rockets at the front line of the Wannyshe, the finger-length, thumb's-width shells streaking at their targets at just under Mach 1 flight velocity... Each explosive shell disgorged a white-hot incendiary blast with an energy potential capable of tearing a hole through a third of a meter thickness of plate armor. When the Wannyshe encountered the fusillade, they rode through it as if it were little more than storm-birthed rain.
The mounted devils gathered into a single lasso formation and encircled the front of the Swordphont compound and, raising their long lances in choreographed unison, discharged a cascade of densely-focused, electromagnetic fury.
The front gates disappeared in a gale force blast of screeching, wailing brilliance... the concussion from the blast traveled inwards into the compound like a luminous tidal wave, pulverizing masonry, scorching metal surfaces and shattering glass.
Inside the Ops Center, the portal-windows blew inward, spitting glass everywhere, and sparks hissed as they flew in fanning, rooster tail-like eruptions while the blastwave cracked the walls, causing some mechanical and electronic devices to fracture or implode.
Someone screamed as they were hit with a shower of white-hot debris...
The murderous Riders of Dreidax Terathi charged through the ragged opening like a raging flood of executioners.
* * *
Sitting uncomfortably astride an alien steed outside Swordphont 107, watching the chaos from a safe vantage point on a nearby hill, Lord Eragoze Hehlgrummyte lowered his hand from the frame-rim of his visor and turned down the telescopic magnification.
He didn't need to see what would happen now. He didn't want to see any of what was going to happen next. He had more than enough memories of such scenes of carnage and bloodshed already stored in the dark recesses of his mind.
"You've gotten old, old and soft," Syrrus Drehdfynitor said harshly. "There was a time when such a tableau made your heart pound like hammer-to-anvil and made your pulse race as quickly as a fleet steed across the plains. Now look at you. An aged academic, little more than a hermit-priest, silently apologizing to some nameless, faceless god to forgive you for your supposed sins. Pathetic. Not because you show remorse or regret the waste of human life inside the battlezone, but because you actually have fooled yourself into believing your invisible, ever-silent 'god' cares about what you do. Rest assured, I have met these gods, your gods, face-to-face, and they couldn't care less about you -- or your sins."
Lord Hehlgrummyte turned in his saddle to regard Drehdfynitor with a cold stare that summed up all the bitterness and distaste he felt for the day's events. Drehdfynitor had accompanied the Wannyshe through use of a trans-dimensional bubble, a Reality Cage, in which he could reside for modest periods of time.
"It always strikes me as tragic and wasteful that creatures like you, those who are ungracious and broken and cruel, are afforded the rare opportunity to sit at the feet of celestial deities like our gods," he said. "It seems as though those of us who could learn so much from them, those of us who'd feel honored to be given such an audience, are somehow judged unworthy of their attention."
Drehdfynitor, residing inside his mobile, personal, mini-channel sub-cosmos, smiled humorlessly.
"You ARE unworthy. You think you are the last sane man in a world gone mad. Nothing could be further from the truth. You think like prey. You lie to yourself. You forget that Gods, above all other things both philosophical and metaphysical, even spiritual, are powerful beings who are simply killers who predate on a tremendously vast and varied scale."
"So, if not a god or an angel or a prophet, what do you consider yourself to be, Syrrus?"
"I am a Harvester of Endings..., and be not confused -- all things end, all things. Even gods."
Hehlgrummyte sighed. He was tired. "When we are done here, we will travel on to Abyssium, yes? That was the plan. That was our agreement..."
"Absolutely. It is where we belong, a place of unending twilight. Moreover, it is a charnel house of fresh meat. It is, after all, famously referred to as the City of Final Days."
* * *
His wounds hurt, but despite their abundance and ferocious nature they were healing well and quickly, thanks be to the invasive and painful bio-gengineered enhancements he'd undergone to become one of the mighty Nahztreme.
Squadron Captain Balem Tarwook, Extraplanetary Expansionist Forces Territorial SpecOps, knelt awkwardly on a stone outcropping positioned four stories high to the north of Swordphont 107 and bowed his head, not in sadness or in grief, but in bitter resignation.
One would have thought that he'd have been rewarded for surviving his brutal encounter with the feral and rapacious Caged Ones of the Uffraza Trail by attaining respite and sanctuary once again at Swordphont 107, but that was not his fate.
He'd seen everything.
Supposedly retired former warlord Eragoze Hehlgrummyte and some twisted abomination of mutant-garbage had brought The Riders to the last place he and his brothers-at-arms had been assigned to protect.
The base had fallen. The Wannyshe had razed it, overwhelming its defenders. He hadn't been there to fight for it. He had failed in his responsibilities and the name of the Nahztreme had been tarnished.
He'd hated the place and had held no fondness for any of its denizens, but he'd had his mission and he still had his pride.
This would not go unanswered.
Abyssium. The answers would be there, in that place. There was little sense in mourning what had happened and even less time during which to entertain his personal feelings of injustice. He would scavenge the base's ruins and gather what supplies he could and he would travel on to Abyssium.
And then he was going to kill those freak-bastard mercenary contractors who'd abandoned him and tear the heart from out Lord Hehlgrummytes chest before The Riders laid him low...
Yes. That was a plan a man could live with.
* * *