Karliandras Dru’ell could not suppress the shiver of dread that ran down her spine as she surveyed her surroundings.  That feeling of dread, of impending doom, overshadowed the extreme guilt she already felt for being where she was, for being involved with what it was she was involved in.  She was an academician, an observer and statistician.  Her view of the world, of Reality itself, was governed by an understanding of Cause and Effect, of Action and Inaction and Counter-action; there was a logic inherent in all things and that understanding was at the heart of every decision she made.  She was not, by nature, at all political.  She did not like feeling duplicitous or traitorous and, unfortunately, that was precisely how recent events had managed to make her feel.  Despite her careful planning and her extrapolations on the multiplicity of possible results derived from those plans, everything was threatening to spin completely out of control.

Bad things were happening.  Yet, just over the horizon, there were even worse things threatening to occur.

How did it all manage to fall apart like this?

She raised her eyes to connect with those of the man across the small clearing from her and she knew... Because of him.  It was all his fault.   And there was nothing she could do about it.

That was how she came to be in this place, this haunted, crumbling  necropolis, a place cursed and reviled by the Church of the Emperium, a sprawling monument to a time long-forgotten...

Karliandras, her over-lush, rotund form wrapped in the thick official cloak of her office against the bitter cold infusing the area, was standing in the deep shadows cast by the colossal ancient cathedral known as Qatedralle Zwarte.

She was here, in the black heart of a place where the outlawed Order of the Fraternity Machus still plotted to return The Withered Land to the soullessness and hegemonic tyranny of the Age of Machines.  She was here, in this fearsome place, with him, the man popularly known as "The Crucifixer"...

Arvenall Dampiko, the enemy of her dearest friend and lord, Kolag Y'phree....

Warlord Arvenall Dampiko was a lantern-jawed bear of a man, exceptionally tall and broad, even for being from the wild bloodlines of the harsh, barbarian rebels from the equatorial climes.  He was thoroughly hairless, without so much as eyebrows on his coppery-brown face, and his startlingly clear blue eyes were cold, sharp and challenging, telling of his mixed parentage as the eldest son of a sea-going Reaver from the icy northern climes and a sharp-featured princess from the searing, humid jungles.  He wore a pair of large golden hoops in each hanging earlobe and a line of shining metal studs had been imbedded down the cheeks on each side of his face.  The edges of his full lips were downturned into a permanent expression of contempt. 

 He was dressed in layers, firstly a loose cloth tunic and pants of burnished bronze color and then an overlay of a vest of dull-gray denim-like material brocaded with strips of deep brown leather.  On each shoulder was a metal epaulet that dramatically protruded beyond the normal outline of his body's shape and that epaulet was designed in the shape of an animal's skull, mouth opened wide to display viciously-curved fangs.  He wore knee-high boots made from the waterproofed, tanned leather hides of a banded lizard-bison.  The knees of the boots were studded with a wide, bas-relief, metal sculpture of the  angry face of a ferocious, long-maned hunting cat, not unlike that of an earthly lion.  Resting on his back was a scabbard that ran from his shoulder to his waist, wide as a strong man's arm, in which a heavy broadsword was held.  A pair of foot-long curved, wicked-looking knives sat on each hip, suspended from a flat black leather belt.  Sitting above the belt, on his right side, was a short-barreled, multi-chambered pistol hanging from a thong looped over the opposite shoulder and around his thick neck.

 Next to him stood the slender, waspish Knighted Arch-Inquisitor, a man she recognized despite his head and face being obscured by the uniform of his office, the Hood of Torment and the mask of an Angel Weeping.  His name, she knew, was Purge.

 Kolag Y’phree’s Grand Vizier was furious with herself.  Karliandras Dru’ell was not among friends or even allies.  These men were unrepentant predators.

 In the sky off to her left, twenty meters above the parapet of one of the cathedral’s spikey parapets and eclipsing the shrinking half-crescent of the top of the setting red sun, hovered a pair of cobalt blue, metal flying machines, shaped like pregnant hornets.  They emitted an insistent, fat, low-pitched hissing noise and, through the glassy side portals, she could see slits of orange light from inside the crafts.

 Aerial troop carriers.

 A sudden blustery stream of wind vibrated a loose metal bar in a tower on the side of the cathedral's sloping roof, and the whorl produced a hauntingly unmusical fluting noise.  Arvenall Dampiko's looked up.  His feral face, one unused to displaying normal human emotions, morphed into an approximation of a human smile and he blinked slowly, leaving his icy eyes locked onto those of the Grand Vizier's.

 "This is not a comfortable place," he said in a deep, rough-edged baritone.  "It does not welcome human intrusion.  No one wants to come here.  I understand that.  But it is a place of history and as such, I think, the perfect backdrop for the matters which we must discuss."

 "Really?  Why am I here?" Kaliandras asked bluntly.  "You know fully well I rarely leave the confines of my Court Sanctum and even more rarely travel beyond the walled borders of The City.  My illness cuts me off from such episodic experiences.  It prevents me from partaking in physical interaction with much of the world around me.  I had to travel cross-plains via drawn carriage for four hours to reach Qatedralle Zwarte.  It was a very trying journey.  I feel as though I've been kicked and beaten..."

 “I know,” Dampiko said not unkindly.  “And I appreciate your efforts.”

 "Then what, my lord, can I help you with?  After all, you have your own advisors, your own scientists and statisticians, on which to rely.  What counsel could I provide that they cannot?"

 “Upworlders,” Dampiko said.  “You know far more about Upworlders than they.  I find it both interesting and a little disturbing that so many of my scientists and advisors, not to mention my spies, tell me that you have become quite an authority on all things alien.”

 Karliandras frowned and shook her head.  “I’m sorry, but what are you talking about?”

 “Kolag Y’phree’s freakish mercenary paladin.  The Traveler in Red.”

 Karliandras drew in a deep and fluttery breath as the feeling of dread within her blossomed into something deeper and colder: alarm.

 “Is this wise?  Why would you be at all interested in him?” she responded hesitantly.

 “I have it on good authority that the Upworld humans, I think they are called ‘Terrans’ or ‘Earthmen’, have rather imperiously sent a military contingent here to our world, without as much as a by your leave, to retrieve him.”

 “So what would that have to do with me, specifically?”

 Arvenall Dampiko favored Karliandras with a look of disappointment.  “Oh come now.  Don’t be obtuse.  You are the one who let the Upworld humans know about the existence among them of a, by their standards, impossibly long-lived physician and murderer named ‘James Anthony Pearson-Saint Cloud’, hiding on the world of Sol III on an island nation called ‘Great Britain’.  Of course, we here know this man by a different name.  We call him Mystikyll and he was once a member of the Fraternity Machus.  He is a liar and a thief and a traitor.  This Mystikyll is, we have learned, imbedded with that alien military unit and they are here now, today, on our world.”

 He paused.  He took three very slow, deliberate steps forward, towards Karliandras.

 “And Kolag Y’phree’s Traveler in Red is destined to rendezvous with those Upworld invaders.”

 “A confluence of coincidence,” the Grand Vizier said.  “None of this was orchestrated at any level by the governing council of The City.  Lord Y’phree did not plan or have any advanced knowledge that such an event would occur.  Neither did the Traveler know anything of it.”

 “So you say,” Dampiko said.  “But we say different.”

 “We say Kolag Y’phree’s raging ambitions have led him into a conspiracy that bridges two worlds, endangering two universes,” Purge said, speaking for the first time.  “We say Kolag Y’phree, a known malcontent and rebel, a long time turncoat against the very Emperium he once served, a power-mongering despot with dreams of conquest and dynasty, is using long-forbidden cosmic knowledge and technology to expose all of Teshiwahur to the dangerous and deadly advance of an alien army.  We say this ‘Traveler in Red’ in his service is nothing more than an agent provocateur and assassin primed to lead warriors from Sol III into direct conflict with the remnants of the armies of the Emperium.”

 “And we say, my dear Grand Vizier,you knew all about it,” Dampiko said, finishing Purge’s tirade.

 Purge pointed at Karliandras with a gloved hand as he said, “And once the warlords and royal houses of this world hear what we say, and you can trust that they will, they’ll demand we kill you both.”

 “Which would leave the governing of The City open for new management,” Dampiko said pointedly.

 Karliandras was trembling as she said,  “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.  You would, of course, have to produce some kind of proof to support such extraordinary claims.”

 “Yes,” Dampiko said, looking down distractedly at the toes of his boots.  “We would, wouldn’t we?”

 “The proof is on its way here, even as we speak,” Purge said confidently.

 “I see,” the Grand Vizier said softly.  “So I think that brings me back to my original question: why am I here?”

 Arvenall Dampiko strode wordlessly across the short distance to her side.  He calmly reached out and gently encircled her rounded shoulders with his long, muscular arm.  She flinched at the pressure she felt through the ceremonial robe draped around her.  At noticing that reflexive movement, the Warlord sighed, blinked a slow reptilian blink, and looked down into Karliandras’ upturned face.

 “Tell us about the metal.  Tell us about this miraculous Ikarenium that you have kept a secret for so long,” he said.

                               *     *     *    

 Major Brent Holloway bitterly cursed himself for a fool as he ran up the pebble-strewn, grassy valley wall from across the sun-baked plains stretching away behind him.  His back had begun to hurt and he nearly stumbled as he jogged up the incline, but he kept his balance and tossed a quick look to his right and to his left, observing the remaining members of his battered team as they crossed out from the borders of the Forever Plain following the Knight, D'Spayr, and the witch-princess, Nygeia.

 D'Spayr.  Nygeia.  Strange names for even stranger alien people. He had known from the very start of this mission that the opportunity and likelihood of First Contact would be disorienting, but he'd thought that since he'd already met and spoken with The Ambassador back on Earth, he'd handle the whole "Little Green Men" thing with a lot more sophistication and professionalism.  But that hadn't at all been how events had transpired.  Those creatures, those savage, semi-decomposed, half-alive feral beast-men D'Spayr had called "Night Marshals" had really spooked him.  They weren't "aliens" in the way he'd expected, not like the highly intelligent, slightly arrogant, only mildly physically mutated beings portrayed in Hollywood science fiction movies.

 These creatures were monsters.  Murderous monsters.

 The situation was just the way Raphael Karamanga had predicted it would be: horrific and nightmarish and happening so damn fast there was almost no time in which to process it.

 How the hell had this happened?

 Ninety-six hours, that was the mission duration during which he and the Broken Mirror unit were supposed to trod the alien soil of The Withered Land.  Ninety-six hours.  And yet, within the first seventy minutes of he and his team of experienced professionals materializing at the far end of the cosmic rainbow, he'd lost five good men.  They'd died brutally.  Bloodily.

 They weren't prepared for this.  No one was.

 Holloway looked up to the top of the valley wall and saw Nygeia waving to him, beckoning him to move faster, make better time.  He couldn't believe how physically fragile he and the Broken Mirror team were in comparison with the inhabitants of this world.  They were stronger muscularly and faster, seemingly possessing better neurological reaction times, and more accomplished athletically than even the most physically fit of Holloway's men.  They were beings better adapted to a more challenging, more dangerous physical environment.  And, at least so far as Holloway could tell from his encounter with the Night Marshals, inhabitants of The Withered Land were apparently much more durable than regular human beings, able to absorb much more punishment than any normal man or woman of Earth could.  This did not fill his team with confidence on the event of another encounter with those creatures.

 Ninety-six hours.  How the hell were they supposed to survive?

 The Major let his mind wander back to only an hour previously, when, immediately following the assault of the Night Marshals, they had reluctantly joined forces with D'Spayr and Nygeia.  Truth to tell, they hadn't had much choice: it was a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".  Broken Mirror didn't know whether or not the Knight and the witch-princess could be truly considered as allies, but, at that desperate moment in the heat of battle, there'd been little choice but to accept them as comrades.  The Knight's dazzling display of combat prowess in engaging multiple assailants and Nygeia's pyrotechnic display of deadliness had been surprising and shocking enough, but then the sudden nearby arrival of the macabre Dryfftnaught rising from the sands had collectively stunned and confused the soldiers.  There was just so much more going on in The Withered Land than they could have predicted and it was apparent that The Ambassador was central to much of it.

 It had been Nygeia who had volunteered information that had helped to clear up some of the mystery.

 "I know Mystikyll, whom you call The Ambassador, back on Earth," she had explained.  "I have never known him well, and not even for that long, and we have no real relationship, neither being friends nor enemies, but we were aware of each other as people who shared the unique secret of our dual ... citizenship ... across Space and Time to here.  I knew him, of course by his chosen human name of 'James Pearson-Saint Cloud'.  So, when he contacted your military sciences agency, I suppose his plan had been to secure my services as a kind of guide, and my political influence amongst the local aristocracy as a way to open doors of diplomacy, once you arrived here in Teshiwahur.  At least, that would appear to have been his plan on at first glance.  It becomes obvious now he had more devious motives than that."

 "He is well-known to be a Machusian, one of the Fraternity of Machus," D'Spayr had told them, albeit reluctantly.  He did not as yet trust their intentions towards his world.  After all, the only other Upworlder he'd met other than Nygeia had been The Pilgrim.  "And he is an Enemy of the State, declared an outcast and a revolutionary.  A member of an ancient, secretive Order of scientists, machine-makers and sorcerers seeking to rediscover the Laws of the System Mages, the Mages being a sect who’d once been one of the ruling social classes of the Emperium, before the appearance in our skies of The Wound and the beginning of the Long Death.  This is about power, fellow warriors, power over the physical planet, power over the surviving remnants of a star-spanning technological civilization, power over the large and mighty armies of disparate warlords currently controlling this planet."

 Nygeia had explained to them further.  "The Withered Land is not a world like the one from which you hail.  We don't have states.  We don't have nations.  Our civilization, such as it is these dark days, has developed in the aftermath of a planetary disaster where a section of Space itself has warped the laws of physics on a planetary scale.  We've become a more feudal and more tribal society, prone to loose agreements of non-aggression between territories, militaristic isolationism of hardline followers of the old, fallen Church of the Emperium, and extreme xenophobic persecution of anyone displaying strange powers or following unusual customs.  We are very, very paranoid and, in turn, we can become very, very violent with little provocation.  But the one thing we do have aplenty are secrets --- secret knowledge and secret technologies and secret crimes.  And you, non-native alien people whom we have deemed 'Upworlders', are not welcome here."

 Doctor Veneralli had taken the lead in speaking with the Teshiwahurian duo.  “So essentially what you’re saying is that Mystikyll set us up to be his private alien army to help him gain control of some artifact of power that he can use to restore his people to power.”

 “I do think you are beginning to get a firm grasp of the situation,” D’Spayr commented wryly.

 “Pardon me if I really don’t care about any of this,” Holloway had said glumly.  “But a lot of my men have just been killed by dead aliens who can teleport in and out from thin air.”

 D’Spayr had tilted his head to one side and frowned at the comment.  “Aliens?  You are the aliens.  The Night Marshals were a part of our culture.  And though I do truly grieve for the loss of your brave men, remember that they were soldiers and that they died while in battle.  On this world, to die in such a way is a blessing.  Death in battle is what we soldiers are prepared to do.”

 Holloway had snarled wordlessly and stared daggers at D’Spayr even as Karamanga had snidely remarked, “And you expect warm fuzzies from an armored Space Knight who rides a dragon?  Get with the program, soldier boy, this ain’t home anymore.”

 Holloway had succumbed to his barely suppressed rage and drawn his sidearm, pointing it squarely at Karamanga.  He had then cocked the pistol.

 “Shut up, asshole,” he had growled.  Karamanga stumbled backwards a trio of unsteady steps, hands held high, his frightened eyes bulging.

 “So what’s next?” Veneralli had asked, quickly interjecting to avert the confrontation.

       “The Vorgianis Territories, south of Jaggerheim, where the dreadful Machusian cathedral of Qatedralle Zwarte squats upon the landscape.  That has to be where Mystikyll was heading before he was captured by the crew of that Dryfftnaught that rose from the dunes," Nygeia had concluded.

“And how far away is that in both time and in distance?” Holloway had asked, holstering his weapon and avoiding eye contact with his remaining men, embarrassed to have lost his temper in front of them.

“Easier to show you than to tell you,” D’Spayr had said.  “Just follow.”

The Knight had gently jerked the reins of his reptile steed’s bridle and the animal had turned to begin the journey, but Holloway had interrupted D’Spayr’s actions.

“Not yet.  We don’t leave without sending our fallen home,” he’d said.

And with that Major Holloway and Doctor Veneralli had, with the aid of Broken Mirror team members Axwell, Kapeleffski Yamazaki, Wohlfinger and Salzmann, searched and secured the bodies of the dead.  Disengaging some of the fallen soldiers from the death-grips of their dead attackers had been gruesome.  Once that grim deed was done, they had begun the process of cleaning up the horribly distressed bodies and then activating their tracer capsules of Ikarenium. 

A jagged spider’s web of dancing electricity had enveloped each of the bodies and then their images rippled as they faded away to nothing.

The remaining members of the unit had stared at where the bodies had been for a long, silent moment and had then gathered together and redistributed the weapons and supplies they’d removed from their fallen friends, strapping up, getting ready to move.

Holloway had then walked slowly over to the towering side haunch of D’Spayr’s steed, looked up into the helmeted face of the Knight, and had then said, “Okay.  Let’s do this.”

The Knight had nodded solemnly.  Without further preamble, their journey began…