Pex'Insava's atmosphere was predominantly generated by the sixty kilometer-long mountain range dominating the moon's brutal glacial polar zone, where "Faryn'galf Agonnis", which translated loosely to mean "the Wolf's Fangs", a nine and a half kilometer-tall semi-pyramidal peak, rose heavenward. There were no actual wolves, not as they were known to exist on far distant planet Earth, on Pex'Insava, but there did exist dog-like, feral pack animals called "Jengilexae" roaming the icy hills and tundra. Six-legged and part-mammal and part-reptile, they were foremost among the few native higher, non-human lifeforms abroad the large, flatish moon. They often followed the winds along Pex'Insava's atmospheric storm corridor. Yanked down to the moon's surface by gravity, solar winds from the planetary system's dual suns created hurricane force gales that scoured the expansive blue-white ice fields, rushing across the lunar landscape down into the more temperate, human-populated regions as the electromagnetic solar plasma rushed along the lines of Pex'Insava's unusually strong magnetosphere.

Some days, during the winter months at the borders of the polar zone, a person could hear the winds. They sounded like the melancholy, doleful baying of a thousand wolves, like feral lost souls in savage worship to a beast-god destined to never answer their prayers. Oftentimes, the echoes of that wailing would ride the winds, permeating into the moon's surface interior territories as far as Port Breqhamwurth at the shores of the Oceanic Zone.

The few days and nights when that would occur, the howling created a dire music that pierced the soul and blackened the hearts of those who listened, birthing monsters in the minds of men.

This day was one of those days. Turbulent blasts of frigid air, warming slowly from the reflected heat of the arid sandy regions beyond the icefields, galloped a twisting, tortuous path down from Faryn'galf Agonnis towards the towering steel and glass pagodas of the gated city of Kithpell Manus.

Lord Eragoze Hehlgrummyte squinted his eyes shut and ground his teeth while he heard that dismal, unmelodious howling. He drew a deep breath into his broad chest and held it for a moment before he banished the feeling of dread it inspired within him.

He had left his Master Mage, Kazzime Joxx, in command of the Whyrligaegem at the Baronial Compound housing his Astromancer's Complex. Joxx's Fae-Spawn Sentinel, the tattooed giant named Anthus Rhoggym, was acting as his temporary Chief of Security. Hehlgrummyte hadn't wanted to do that, but he'd been left with little choice, especially since he hadn't wanted the freakish Qrypfathenne Psyonikant, Orakun Maadregul, peering too closely into his affairs upon her revisit to the Baronial Compound --- something guaranteed to happen while he was away.

It had been a while since Lord Hehlgrummyte had been directly involved in any dealings with Pex'Insava's political powerbrokers, but he remembered enough to know there were certain realities that did not change. And the first of those was: never, ever trust a Qrypfathenne.

Across from Hehlgrummyte's voluminously large, high-backed Envoy's chair, facing him inside the roomy passenger cabin of the ornately decorated MagLev hover-coach in which he and his coterie rode, his bodyguards, Esteffyah and Xylander, watched him worriedly.

His voice a low-pitched, soft croak, Hehlgrummyte spoke in a disaffected and distracted manner, addressing his remarks to no one and yet everyone. "Do you hear that, just under the hum of the engines, can you hear it? That hollow, moaning keen, that wail, it always takes me back to those times before my exile, before my life as an Astromancer, back to when I was far more brutish and far more arrogant. Back to when I thought nothing in life was more important than the rapid and decisive accumulation of power... Do you hear it, that sound?"

The two heavily armed protective escorts said nothing. They knew Hehlgrummyte's question to be little more than the product of moot musings. They had become accustomed to Hehlgrummyte's habit of sharing random thoughts and musings aloud. It was his way of processing his inner tensions and misgivings. Besides, neither of the bodyguards was possessed of anything resembling a philosophically reflective nature.

"Like the beckoning of revenants, calling to us beyond the walls of Death," Hehlgrummyte continued. "This land through which we travel, this city we are approaching, is a dour, grim realm draped in perpetual twilight, where shadows, uncast by humans and independent as they traverse the streets and byways, have a life of their own... Did you know that Kithpell Manus, built around an ancient oasis, was once a sanctuary city, a crossroads metropolis behind towering walls that served as a haven for all manner of hardy travelers who crawled across Pex'Insava's ruined, geographically-wounded surface?"

"Seriously? No, I didn't," Esteffyah admitted aloud.  She flinched as soon as the words left her lips.  She hadn't wanted to encourage her employer's rambling monologue.

Hehlgrummyte nodded to her and continued. "The Prefect-Imperius of the city was a human non-mutant variant, an evolutionary one-off who'd been hunted and hounded by the very tribe into which he'd been born as a shaman's son, and he'd been blessed with the ability to physically project energy force fields through force of will. In his nomadic travels, he'd stumbled upon a crumbling necropolis, populated by a handful of ethnically-unrelated indigenous tribespeople, whom he politically unified, then architecting and building the necropolis into a waystation for other pilgrims and merchant traders. The hospitable Prefect-Imperius became the predominant lawmaker for the newly reinvigorated city, creating a parliamentary governing body, and the reputation of Kithpell Manus' inclusive and non-sectarian climate resulted in rapid growth and an influx of monetary wealth from various sources. It became a marvelously orderly and yet very non-discriminatory metropolis. Mostly, it still is. But that was before the unanticipated arrival of Syrrus Drehdfynitor and the Burssurken Swarm, those vile-minded, outlaw Fae-Spawn synthedroids who'd escaped from Fabrikkant-Anvil at Forbynqorre Base..."

Esteffyah and Xylander both glowered and shifted uncomfortably in their seats at Hehlgrummyte's use of the term "synthedroid". As autonomous biosynthetic-constructs themselves, they were well aware of the negative racial and species-bigoted overtones from use of that word. They, as a human-originated, genetically-engineered, manufactured sentient species, preferred to be called "Metasynths" or "Huma-Divergs". 'Synthedroids' was a throwback term of denigration used to describe biological androids considered similar in many ways to the hive-minded mech-men of the invading Gorgahnun Horde.

"You know, my Lord, if you think about it, the ascendance of Drehdfynitor and the Burssurken was kind of an inevitability," Xylander interjected cautiously, reluctant to risk Hehlgrummyte's ire, but determined, in a non-confrontational way, to get across the point that, whether or not they were considered synthedroids or Metasynths, the appearance and integration of outlaw refugees from the Fabrikkant-Anvil facility into the fabric of Kithpell Manus' general population and cultural scene was a natural event. "After all, Kithpell Manus was born from the concept that unregulated immigration would likely produce social tensions and politico-economic stratification, but that such uncertainty could and should be controlled and not result in a destabilized unhomogenized society. But no one predicted an anomaly like Syrrus Drehdfynitor was even the remotest of possibilities."

Hehlgrummyte raised an eyebrow and regarded Xylander with an appraising stare. The bodyguard's words reminded the Astromancer-Noble that intelligence and capacity for independent, analytical thought was one of the virtues he had most sought early on in his auditioning for guardian-escorts. Now, several long solar orbital heliars down the line, he belatedly realized those same values also presented many a problem sometimes.

"Your point is well made," Hehlgrummyte said reluctantly. "I agree with the bulk of your assessment, but it still seems to me that the likelihood of the Fae-Spawn Burssurken relinquishing control over their own destinies to an amoral non-Metasynth, human mutant, criminal overlord like Syrrus Drehdfynitor was beyond improbable --- it was tantamount to insanity."

"Can't disagree with you on that count," Xylander agreed as Esteffyah discretely and conspiratorially nudged him to promptly cease talking. He sighed and refrained from further commentary.

"And yet it is all those things that make Drehdfynitor the perfect person to contact in the present situation," Hehlgrummyte said unenthusiastically. The admission was one he was obviously loathe to make.

What followed were several minutes of disconsolate silence until the MagLev hover-coach's pilot said through the intercom, "Flight-dock at Kithpell Manus Transit Freeport in 5, 4, 3, 2..."

A quintet of Burssurken warriors met them brandishing weapons as they disembarked.

The leader was a tawny-skinned woman nearly two and a half meters in height, dressed in a form-fitting blue-black, tactical-design uniform that had silver gauntlets and silver knee-high boots. Her feline, triangular face was adorned with abstract, intricately curved, black tribal tattoos and her opalescent eyes glowed even under the artificial lights illuminating the airfield's flight-dock. Her lean torso was draped in twin bandoliers holding an assortment of bladed weapons and a long-barreled blaster pistol was holstered low on her hips. Her biceps and her thighs were exposed, devoid of any armor, and her skin, further decorated with fine-line tattoos, looked shiny and plastic. Though her comrades were similarly uniformed, they had each individualized their attire with assorted neo-primitive paraphernalia like skeletal bones from dead animals, small bracelets and necklaces of looped and braided leather, metal coins and magical fetishes, and spent shells from antique projectile ammunition. She, like all the Burssurken, exuded an aura of barely contained menace, emitting a promise of violence with nearly every breath.

The small airfield was the remnant of an abandoned Emperium military outpost, which itself had been a re-purposed construct, that being the detached flight deck from a downed starship. The airstrip was mounted upon the sweeping, swan-like neck of a large conning tower.

"You are late. We require that you follow us this way," her voice was a cold contralto heavily shaded by disdain. As she imperiously walked away, the other members of her entourage parted ranks to let her take the lead back towards the pneumo-tube platform that led to the interior of the airfield on the floor below. 

Xylander and Esteffyah found it to be particularly telling that the Burssurken did not bother to search them for nor threaten to confiscate any weapons they may have brought to the rendezvous. A hint at their collective level of confidence. And their arrogance. They obviously considered themselves to be more dangerous than anyone they would likely encounter. Mentally assessing the potential physical threat posed by each member of the small delegation, the bodyguards each carefully catalogued any of the Burssurkens' telltale idiosyncratic weaknesses. They didn't find much.

They seriously hoped Lord Hehlgrummyte knew what it was he was doing.  

Leaving the pneumo-lift, Hehlgrummyte and the bodyguards stepped out into a cavernous hall under a massive skylight. A central corridor split the elliptical floor plan down the middle, separating a crazy-quilt collective of various work centers populated by an exotic mob of peoples from different castes of local society. Vehicle mechanics and blacksmith-like metal-workers worked in clearly-delineated, self-contained areas separated by shoulder-high corrugated metal walls, while office workers and minor bureaucratic functionaries worked alongside spaces where carpenters and guild tradesfolk diligently plied their methodical skills while atop mezzanine platforms clearly constructed as an after-thought electricians and telecommunications technicians set about their complexly specialized tasks with introverted absorption... 

Through his armor, Hehlgrummyte felt a sudden and insistent, gentle tapping at his shoulder, from behind, and he turned to meet Esteffyah's gaze. Her eyes were wide. She was shaken. She slowly pointed upwards, towards the skylight overhead...

There, floating in mid-air, several meters above the floor of the facility, overlooking the busy work cubicles and equipment-strewn corrals, a group of eight wizened old men sat cross-legged in a circle. They were bathed in the dim illumination coming in from the skylight. Their eyes were closed and their faces slack. They were either engaging in psychic levitation or they were being forcibly levitated by some artificially-generated electromagnetic field. They were bathed in the dim illumination coming in from the skylight. Their grouping spun slowly, as if the ancient shamanistic collective were some kind of indoor satellite, and flimsy, elongated tendrils of some kind of aetheric material emanated from their rigid bodies, stretching to connect to assorted electronic machinery on the hangar-chamber's floor. 

Hehlgrummyte could only guess at their purpose... bio-electrical telekinetic field manipulation? Or perhaps the group was inducing a redirected periodicity corridor through a biological interface? Establishing a hive-minded control collective for psychic astral teleportation? He didn't know. But whatever the reasoning behind such an exotic and extreme methodology, they couldn't trust that the purpose behind it was right-minded or moral.   

It was a scene that was visually engrossing and surprisingly loud. And it made no practical sense... Who were these mysterious mages, if mages they were? Why would such a hodgepodge of tasks be concentrated within the ramshackle confines of a cast-off structure such as the airfield?  

As if telepathically sensing the unvoiced question of the new arrivals, the Lead Burssurken interrupted her purposeful march through the facility long enough to turn to face Hehlgrummyte and company and curtly say, "As you may know, Kithpell Manus is an independent colony of the Hegemonic Emperium, a special administrative district and city-state whose system of government is separate from that of Pex'Insava's Lunar Judicial Union under the World-Father.

Since the arrival of the Gorgahnuns in our skies, the Territorial Parliamentary Council of Kithpell Manus has stridently declared any and all work or projects using Emperium-derived military technology to be submitted for their direct sponsorship and approval, regardless of any classification or permissions pre-assigned by the Emperium. We don't want to appear to take sides. We of Kithpell Manus have no wish to antagonize either the Gorgahnun Coalition or the Emperium, but we want them both to be aware that our land, our people and our skies are sovereign territory protected under the rule of law. OUR law."

Lord Hehlgrummyte raised an eyebrow and smiled as he said, "So how, then, does that allow for the presence of a mercenary non-human criminal police force like the Burssurken, who have long been declared as 'Enemies of the Supreme Hegemony' by the Emperium, to enforce the laws of this autonomous city-state? That's rather like deputizing thieves and murderers to protect a bank from the actual police and military, is it not?"

The Lead Burssurken glared nastily at Hehlgrummyte. "It is decidedly not."

The Astromancer raised his hands in a supplicating gesture even while he returned the woman's hot gaze with his own look brimming with an icy challenge. "Not attempting to argue with you or insult you. Just looking for some clarification."

"Clarification? We know about you, Murder Master, the Fifth Lord of Reishenschall, the Mad Bastard of the Seige of Ahmdugriss-Shendi... Lord Eragoze Hehlgrummyte! We know!" the woman said, taking a step towards the Astromancer. She then stopped herself, regaining control over her emotions. "Do not play your sick games with us. You're no war hero to us, not to OUR kind! Were it not for our orders and our loyalty to Syrrus Drehdfynitor, you would be dead where you stand."

Hehlgrummyte sighed. There, in so many words, was the truth of his shame. It appeared there would never be any escape from the dark stain his past sins. It was a different time, a desperate time, and he had done what he had done in the service of his nation, in the service of the World-Father himself, but the act had taken him beyond the boundaries of moral decency. He was a mass murderer. And he would never be forgiven for who he had once been and what he had done, least of all by the spawn of those whom he had slain.

May All Gods damn Claeryssa Koylrayzur and Orakun Maadregul to burn in a thousand hells. 

Without further discussion, the woman turned away and resumed her march. The Burssurken escorted the trio through a chrome-edged arch and down a sloping corridor made from steel-reinforced masonry. The lights dimmed. This was an area beyond the borders of the massive skylight where the ceiling was made from plaster and stone, part of an edifice obviously far older and less technologically advanced than the main grounds of the airfield depot. Shadows deepened and they could see strange runic characters, an ancient alphabet in a long-dead language, and stylized anthropomorphic figures carved into the cracked and dusty walls. After a few moments they arrived to stand under a shadowed portico where the woman turned back to face them again.

"Walk single file into the dark. Stay close to one another and do not stray from the path. Single file. We will not accompany you past this point."

She then motioned for her comrades to turn around and return up the path from which they came. She started to follow the other Burssurken, but hesitated a moment and then stopped long enough to say, "Though he is, in most ways, our Savior, we are not loyal to him because we love him. And we are not so foolish as to consider him as family. Nor does he hold any affection towards us. He does not entertain many visitors. He sees no reason to. I do not envy you. He is Drehdfynitor. There is wisdom in fearing him."

With that, she walked away, heading back towards the light.

Eragoze Hehlgrummyte watched for a series of heartbeats and then turned to Esteffyah and then to Xylander.

"Let's go", he said and then he strode defiantly into the deepest gloom of the corridor's shadows.    

Some force, something polar cold and solid as the fist of an angry giant, literally whisked them off from their feet and threw them into Infinity.

They couldn't breathe. Something very much like lightning burned their musculature while something icy and wet surrounded their hearts and lungs. Fiery metallic magma traveled a whip-quick path along every neuron in their nervous systems. The blink of a blind eye after that, they couldn't any longer feel their bodies.

The moment they had become totally immersed in the dark space, they belatedly realized into what they'd been led... it was a Shunt, a Time Hollow. The knowledge was instinctual. Yet, it was impossible. It wasn't supposed to exist. School children were entertained with fables about such things. Grizzled Star Legion space sailors talked about them in drunken whispers. Madmen who imagined themselves to be sorcerers wrote feverish dissertations about them. Religious zealots extolled the cosmic virtues hiding on their distant other sides. Such constructs were contrary to all the laws of physical science and astrometric spacetime Hehlgrummyte and his bodyguards understood.

It struck them that this was the thing to which all those people in the cluttered airfield depot center had been attending.

Panic and dread threatened to overwhelm their rational minds... They were dying. Dying. Nothing living could survive this horrific flood of alien sensations.

And then, abruptly, they were there. Whole again. Near overcome with sensation. Someplace auxilliary, someplace peripheral. The Beyond. Elsewhere.

The sky, if that what it was that stretched out expansively above them, was partially occluded by towering, billowing, rolling mountains of reddish-orange mist through which cascades of pale yellow light attempted to pour down. There was no wind and yet the oceanic tsunami of air-born mist moved as if driven by gale force blasts of air. Something mammoth, yet unsolid and spectral, whose details could not be discerned, masked from the eye, lurked behind the quiet, yet intimidating storm and came inland, across the cracked plain, like a galloping predator. The air had a taste to it, sour, acrid, wild and refreshing in an unwholesome, degenerate way, like tasting Sin Itself.

They were weeping as they beheld a tall, partially cloaked figure. Wide-shouldered, gladiatorial tactical armor of advanced design. Spike-studded shoulder pauldrons. Sinister, expansive,multi-branched horns, like those on a Terran-Earth elk or a moose, emitting from above the temples of a large, helmeted head. Armored fist wrapped around the thick handle of an over-sized war mace with a five-sided head. It casually strolled over to where Hehlgrummyte and company had collapsed to kneel on unfamiliar soil and, as it drew nearer, it's finer details resolved into a portrait of a creature out of nightmares.

It smiled and executed a short, courtly bow.

"I am Syrrus Drehdfynitor", it said in a distinctly male voice that shook with the reverberating buzz of a hundred thousand wasps. "Eragoze, my friend, did I or did I not warn you to never do what you have just done? I realize this was a long time past, but I had thought then I was doing you a kindness. I didn't tell you those things just to hear the sound of my own voice. But still you came looking for me. So look at you now..."

Shaking, still working to overcome the after-effects of traveling through the Shunt, Hehlgrummyte raised his hand as if to physically stave off whatever dire act Drehdfynitor was about to commit towards him and his companions.

"Wait... give me a ... moment...", he stammered past a thick tongue that felt as if it could no longer produce language.

"Why? I don't need to. You're in my world now. And what I need to do is to watch you all suffer. That is the kind of a need I don't intend to deny myself."  As he spoke, puffs of gray smoke issued from his mouth and that smoke drifted on the air, moving against the wind.

Outside the periphery of Hehlgrummyte's vision, there arose a fragile-sounding, percussive wail and suddenly two beams of streaming coherent light burned their way through the cool thin air between Drehdfynitor and his own position. The sizzling beams hit Drehdfynitor with brutally potent force, rocketing into his upper torso, hammering the metal of his Brigandine-style body armor, shaking his powerfully built, humanoid body.

The alien mutant lowered his head to take in the sight of the glowing patch of superheated metal on the overlapping plates of his armored torso, ignoring what should have been the retina-blinding glare from the twin blasts. Tilting his head in an expression of mild curiosity, he then stared across open space to where Esteffyah struggled to rise from off the panoramic patch of baked, cracked soil onto which she and her comrades had fallen. The nozzle of the pistol-style particle blaster in her fist was still glowing. The light beams from her blaster had not penetrated Drehdfynitor's flexible doublet of upper body armor. The impact of the beams, which, upon encountering tactical armor instead of flesh, would have broken the ribs of an ordinary human while knocking him off his feet, were negligible. He hadn't even flinched. It was obvious her efforts had amused him.

"What was that --- a gamma-bolt las-gun? Really? Against me? One would think after all this time your weaponry would have improved..."

"SYRRUS! Stop it, please, just stop!" Hehlgrummyte bellowed.

Drehdfynitor paused and directed his attention towards the exiled nobleman. The posture gave him the aspect of a horned raptor regarding unappealing, but highly vulnerable, prey.

"I know you..., KNEW you! We were never friends, but, for a time, we WERE allies. You're so different now. What happened to you? How did you become like this?"

"I'm a mutant. That is more than just a societal or biogenetic label. It's a process. It is evolution! Back when we originally met, my particular variety of mutation had not yet matured. The so-called 'normalcy' of my conventional human aspect was still ascendant. That ascendancy went into remission. Now the mutation is ascendant. And I am what you see now," Drehdfynitor explained slowly, reluctantly, as if the memory of his past state of existence were in some way painful.

"Why didn't you find me? I'm sure you heard about my situation, my fall from grace. You knew I would have welcomed the distraction from my own troubles. I still had resources at my command of which you could have made use. I would have helped if you'd only have asked...," Hehlgrummyte said hesitantly. "This... this didn't have to happen. What are you now?"

"I am Syrrus Drehdfynitor. Someone you used to know. And, yes, it did have to happen."

Hehlgrummyte lowered his gaze from looking into Drehdfynitor's bleak, unwavering stare. There was something almost accusatory reflected in his pale eyes.

"So, that being said, why did you come here, Hehlgrummyte?"

Mouth dry, the Astromancer squared his shoulders as he spoke. "For a short time, I need to return to my old profession, my old life. And I need an army. Once again, I need the Riders of Dreidax Tarathi. I need you to let me enlist the services of The Wannyshe..."

"... The Wannyshe..." Dumbfounded for a moment, Drehdfynitor stared blankly at his former ally. Then, abruptly, he threw his head back and laughed raucously. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," Hehlgrummyte said, suddenly feeling the weight of fresh damnation descend upon his broad shoulders.

"Well, that is the most interesting and most entertaining thing I've heard anyone say in eight, no, almost NINE, solar orbital heliars... You're going back into the business of mass butchery and you need my help. You could have just sent me such a request by open courier... Yes! A thousand times YES. Consider it done! The Riders of Dreidax Tarathi are again at your service, Lord Hehlgrummyte!"

Hehlgrummyte motioned to Xylander and Esteffyah to holster their weapons and rise to their feet.

Almost as if on cue, the churning, inflamed thunderhead of tangerine-hued mist that rolled across the dry plain parted, writhing like a living thing, and the travelers could see the dark silhouettes of a terrifyingly demonic, mounted cavalry. The many eyes of the specters astride their feral, gruesome steeds glowed with a piercing violet intensity. They could hear the rattle of their swords and axes. They could see the glint of light along the edges of their shields. They could hear the low-pitched thrumming from the energy cartridges powering their particle beam weaponry.

But the most frightful part of the panoramic apparition was the coarse and raspy whispering. Hehlgrummyte and his bodyguards could hear the anticipation of blood-letting and slaughter drifting across the distance between themselves and the Riders. It was an unmusical, ghostly hosanna to murder.    

"Gods help us all," Xylander muttered softly. "Our descent into madness has truly begun."

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