"This is a truly special place, my friend, though not 'special' in the most common way that word is used," Ambassadorial-Diplomatic Judicial Attache Lel'Kinculnon said as the tread-craft carrier truck neared the wall of the city's outer perimeter. He spoke unhurriedly and in low tones to Centrie Brahnz FieldOps Captain Amaxxe Jo'Amerr and to transplanetary daemon-knight Sergeant-Major Gryce'roy Daamen, frowning, his eyes searching the topmost battlements of the wall looming ahead of the carrier truck in which they'd traveled from Vazyoneulle. "This city is nearly a twelve hundred solar orbital heliars in age and was constructed by hands that did not belong to human beings. Pex'Insava was a very different celestial civilization then, far pre-dating the World-Father and the Hegemonic Emperium, and, in those non-industrialized, non-technological times, the general population of Teshiwahur were thoroughly unaware their moon was populated by civilized intelligent beings."

"How is that?" Sergeant-Major Daamen queried. "What you allude to is that this moon does not truly belong in orbit around Teshiwahur."

"Pex'Insava is the remnant of a mostly shattered celestial body, a product of a catastrophic collision further out past the planet Ourubus Adranto towards the Makkaryenne Elasticity, that was captured and by imprisoned by Teshiwahur's massive gravitational pull, forever locked into orbit around the planet as it drifted an irregular path through the solar system that took it inwards towards our dual suns," the Judicial Attache continued. "Sentient beings other that humankind roamed those spaceways openly in those times, unchallenged by the Emperium's Extraplanetary Star Legion Militia since it did not yet exist. So, yes, I am saying that our moon is not truly our moon --- and we are not its original tenants. When the embryonic antecedents of the Star Legion at last ventured here, this city was already here, already old and tattered, partly crumbling, an abandoned monument to an alien civilization of which we never knew."

The carrier drew even with the easterly southern face of Abyssium and headed towards one of the towering three citadel arches that marked guard-tower bracketed entrances leading inside.

"Kocz-sag mani'Veshtum-Rann," Reihn Valkonurr muttered as she quietly drew up to stand beside the three men. "Those words were inscribed across the face of the keystone in the forward-arch of each entry gate. No one knows the meaning. Translators have tried deciphering the phrase for as long as anyone can remember. Only the Elders of the Shachtferadi'im have even the slightest clue as to their meaning. Supposedly it loosely translates as 'Motherland of the Sunless Paradise'."

"It's far and way larger than I imagined," Amaxxe Jo'Amerr said. "That perimeter wall is at least sixteen stories tall. It stretches in either direction across the horizon as far as the eye can see, even through the perpetual sandstorm that rages around it."

"That's not a sandstorm," Lel'Kinculnon said. "That's the outer wall of a paramagnetic spin-field, a physical wall of energetic force driven into a nuclear fury by something we have yet to understand inside the city. Abyssium is encased in a moving semi-porous barrier of atomic force anchored to the city by an unknown nucleus. The citadel arch gates are the ony places where the storm wall allows the passage of physical matter in or out. Its like they project a dissipation cone that can open and close on command... If anyone or anything tries entering through the storm wall at any other juncture, the spin-field shreds them, it literally tears that which tries to breach the wall apart."

"Really? And who or what commands the passages at the gates?" Daamen asked.

"The Prophet. Or, to put it more accurately, 'He-Who-Sits-Before-the-Eyes-Of-Dreidax Tarathi', the massive statue at the physical center of the city that is more popularly known as The Vulcanodian," Reihn Valkonurr replied, her voice hushed, as if afraid that to name 'The Vulcanodian' in a louder voice was an invitation to summon its wrath.

"That's the huge warrior's statue that stands in the midst of the deep pit that sits in Abyssium's heart, right? I've heard The Vulcanodian is roughly twice the height of these perimeter walls, but with its base rooted deeply into the bottom of a well-like meteor impact crater," Sergeant-Major Daamen said.

"Yes," Lel'Kinculnon said with a sage nod.

"And this so-called Prophet?" Daamen pressed.

"A dead man, ancient and totally inanimate, swathed in tattered violet robes, his flesh petrified, forever sitting cross-legged on an unpolished flat stone positioned at eye level facing the statue of this demon-god we've discovered was once called 'Dreidax Tarathi'," Valkonurr replied. Her voice had taken on a soft, dreamy tonality. It was more than a little unnerving.

Amaxxe Jo'Amerr let loose a breathy huff of skepticism, rife with disbelief. "If he's dead, then how does he know who to let into and out from the city and when?"

"No one as yet knows," Lel'Kinculnon answered. "And many more than that have no desire to find out. It is almost as if the choice to grant entrance or exit were a manifestation of Fate Itself. Truly, it's a question whose answer no doubt threatens sanity. The cadaver and his rocky perch are impervious to physical force and cannot be moved, cannot be burned or disintegrated, and anything placed between the Prophet and The Vulcanodian, blocking the giant statue's gaze, is destroyed by alien energies we cannot yet catalogue."

The squat, link-treaded carrier was then sitting atop the roadway's cracked, tightly packed carved stones in the shadow of the massive gate doors.

After a long moment, without the exchange of any audible or visible form of communication, the doors slowly parted, opening to allow the carrier inside.

"Here we go," Gryce'roy Daamen remarked to no one in particular.

The armored personnel transport in which the group from Vazyoneulle rode could accomodate a complement of twenty-four passengers, not counting the vehicle's pilot and co-pilot. Aside from Lel'Kinculnon, Reihn Valkonurr, Gryce'roy Daamen and Amaxxe Jo'Amerr, there were three other members of the Centrie Brahnz unit, Persephall Grymmodeun and Mah'rymeth Kwarq, along with ever-baleful Dhoom-Addur and four Korhng'Nathi hand-picked by the Anomaleunne Vale-Ogre for their savagery and battlefield acumen. The moderately large all-terrain fighting vehicle itself was, like most military technology not under Emperium ownership on Pex'Insava, a relic of another time, scarred and weather-beaten, devoid of any markings or insignia denoting its former military designation, its thick-tiled exterior pitted as a result of cascades of small arms fire during past campaigns. It was scavenged machinery that had been subjected to tinkering from mechanics with varying degrees of talent in valiant efforts to upgrade its propulsion and weapons systems and to keep it running.

A mere four meters away from Daamen, in a set of seats partly isolated by an equipment storage enclave, Mah'rymeth Kwarq rather distractedly executed a complex series of ritualized hand and wrist exercises routinely used by practitioners of her brand of martial arts that kept her grip from becoming stiff. She sat across from Persephall Grymmodeun, her dark eyes locked onto his angular face as he spoke to her in tones low enough to barely be pitched over the mechanical sibilance of the ship's engines as the craft cut the air.

"Port Breqhamworth fell," he said. "A modern technological seaport city, almost untouched by the effects of The Long Death, somehow managing to escape the unraveling of so many of our metropolitan services and industrial achievements... ten thousand civilians, an active, well-trained military force of eight hundred tactically-equipped soldiers, supplied with three aquatic naval attack cruisers, four aerial assault ships, and a quintet of anti-air incursion long-range artillery banks --- and all it reportedly took, according to Haq'Ja Rashaei's covert recon agents, was a trio of saucer-shaped extra-orbital aircraft to bring it all down. Aircraft that did not match any known configuration of Gorgahnun technological design. Just three ships. And they did so inside of a mere four hours. How can that be? We're not getting the whole story, something is very definitely wrong here."

"To tell the truth, old friend," Mah'rymeth Kwarq said softly, "This entire escapade never felt right, not even from the beginning. I think the diplomats we rescued know much more than they're either willing to or able to say. Pex'Insava is being used by both the Emperium and by the invading alien forces as a stepping stone for some greater goal. But I also happen to think that Haq'Ja Rashaei and this Hive-Duke Bittarslarn have re-woven the threads of the story they told us to better serve their own agendas. If you've noticed, ever since we arrived at the Dryfte-Town, they haven't actually allowed us any alone time with Master-Chancellor Czeerai Seda'Bausayed or with Common-Legate Chancellor Gaivus Mersquelix. That suggests that they, the Ambassador and the Chancellor, perhaps know something cryptic and more than a little opaque. And it seems to me it's as if the Korhng'Nathi and the rogue Gorgahnun noble, are afraid we'll learn what that undisclosed something may be... and it's something they'd rather we didn't know."

"I did notice. I thought it might just be my own innate paranoia fanning those feelings. Glad to know otherwise," he said. "You know, I hate it here, where we're headed. Abyssium has always represented the worst parts of my life."

Mah'rymeth frowned and interrupted her hand gestures as she tilted her head questioningly. "Really? How so?"

"Before I was assigned to duty in the Extraplanetary Special Actions Advisors for the Star Legion Militia, before I was deputized as a Law-Hammer, I was a a child of aristocracy, a member of Abyssium's gentried peerage. Even though my ancestry is that of the Uehtharr mutant extraplanetary humans. Yes, Mah'rymeth, I was actually born on Pex'Insava. For an assortment of reasons that seemed important at the time, I ran away, jumped planetside down to Teshiwahur, to join the Qi'thayane war-rovers on the southern continent. My father, a titled Officer in the Exchequer's division in the World-Father's Ministry of Offworld Taxation, was punished for my rebellious actions as a mercenary to counter-Emperium forces. Since my parents were not truly Teshiwahurian-spawned, though, our family lands were taken from us, while my younger brother Korellian Trax, a gentle and poetic soul, was conscripted and mind-washed into being a Night Legion Kommandant in the World-Father's Heretikan Vigailius Truth Force. We were Uehtharr half-castes and it was assumed that we would be eternally grateful for being allowed our freedom to prosper as members of the Hegemonic Emperium. My personal rebellion reminded the Powers-That-Be that non-Teshiwahurians could not and should not be trusted."

"I am sorry. But Korellian Trax?" Mah'rymeth repeated. "Wasn't he the Heretikan Vigailius Kommandant who slaughtered the Eaufidyann Kinfolk at the Qrypfathenne tribal grounds during the wintry Qeringloom cease-fire?"

Grymmodeun nodded. "Yes, yes, Korellian Trax Grymmodeun was the man who brought murder to and spilled blood during the Silent Season, the Time of Ice. And then, he himself was killed under the united swords of the Qrypfathenne Hell-Lords."

"And what does any of that have to do with you or with Abyssium?"

The white-haired mercenary sellsword shifted in his seat, not as a reaction to any physical discomfort, but instead a reflection of his inner discomposure. "I have long suspected that Dhoumhaunt the Anguisher was the Qrypfathenne executive bureaucrat responsible for my father's demotion, my family's fall into poverty, and for the questionable circumstances surrounding my brother's death. I have no proof of any of this, of course, but something about the way Dhoumhaunt behaves towards me, something about the way he hints at a personal knowledge of my past life, makes me believe he is directly connected to my personal history."

"And you didn't trust me enough after all this time to tell me any of this until now?"

Grymmodeun turned sad, weary eyes on her and wrinkled hi lips into a thin, self-deprecating ghost of a smile. "I really wasn't so much keeping a secret from you as vainly attempting to protect you from of the fallout of the bad fortune that seems to follow me wherever I go."

"You lied to me, Persephall. Oh, not a straight up lie to any particular question I asked, but you lied nonetheless. You kept me in the dark. Sins of omission are the same as lies, you know. Of all people, I deserve better than that. You're a diseased ox's puckered butthole, you know that?"

Grymmodeun sighed and closed his eyes as he nodded shamefully.

"So why did we take the job at all, then, Persephall? If this is what you suspected, then why accept the risk of being betrayed... and possibly killed? Why not simply walk away?"

Grymmodeun raised an arm and pointed at Gryce'roy Daamen and the Centrie Brahnz. "I thought maybe I could be of some help in preventing the useless deaths of others who would be used as pawns, as cannon-fodder, in a conflict they didn't truly understand."

"Ahh, I see.   Still entertaining the illusion that what you, as an individual being, think, do, or decide will actually matter in the greater scheme of things.  This is the Withered Land.  Life does not work that way.  And here I thought you'd left such fanciful notions behind you..." Mah'rymeth said quietly.

After a hard moment, Mah'rymeth Kwarq squared her shoulders and sniffed as a gesture of disapproval. Then, not looking at Grymmodeun, she went back to her wrist and forearm limbering exercises.

"Well, damn. That means its probable this whole job was a set up so that he could conduct some sick, murderous vendetta against you. I guess that means that you're going to have to be the one to kill Dhoumhaunt when we run into him," she said. "Honestly, I was kind of looking forward to gutting him myself."

"Why? What grievance do you carry against him?"

"Nothing dramatic. I just happened to catch him staring at my ass in an especially depraved way. It was rude and demeaning. I don't tolerate that kind of rudeness."

Grymmodeun blinked several times rapidly at the unexpected response. "Uhh, alright then."

"Shut up," she said irritably.

At that moment, Sergeant-Major Gryce'roy Daamen left his position next to Lel'Kinculnon and Reihn Valkonurr, walking back into the ship's interior.   He once again began an inventory of the implements and field equipment he wore attached to his utility webbing, ammo pockets, and blade sheathes.  He then picked up his long-barreled phase rifle and made a loud announcement to his team.

"We've passed through the storm wall. The city's Autonomous Nav-lock guidance is directing us to the LZ. We're here."

                                                                                            * * *

*** He had given them his all, holding nothing back. He'd been their attack dog, their layer, literally been their Sword of Righteousness, in service to them he'd abandoned his own needs and ambitions --- and the only thing he'd asked for in return had been had been their fidelity.

Loyalty for loyalty, an equitable allegiance. Or so he'd thought. It had begun, all of it, when he had been pushed from off the precipice. Exiled and elected from the highest of heights, it had begun when he'd forcibly been made to fall.

So what could a soul betrayed do when it had been kicked out from Paradise? Used, abandoned and then deemed obsolete what had they left for him to do? What else but rebel, turning its face away from those whom it had once held as brethren, show its back to all it had once believed in, what else but rise in revolt.

He had not been born a mere mortal man, a human, physically fragile and intellectually limited and cursed with only a handful of senses through which to view and experience the universe and its Reality. He was more than that, more than a man. So why, when they did to him what they had done, had they expected him to respond as such? His wrath was not destined to be on the scale of a mere human.

His vengeance would not be, could not be, so small. He would destroy their world, bring down their empire... He would be what they had created and trained him to be: the Prince of Ruination, a scourge upon all deemed as enemies of the Qrypfathenne Sovereignty.

Punishment made flesh. A Judge-Exterminant, an Anguisher.

Blessed be the Kor'tepha'a Shenq'ail. He would consecrate this time, this moment, this Age of Blood.

His name was Dhoumhaunt. And now he served a greater master than any he'd had known before: himself. And it had started when he had answered the summons of the Rayth'kine.

He would give them his all, holding nothing back.***

The stark and dreary streets of the city were abuzz with talk of the war. The testy and cantankerous, and often cynical, citizens of Abyssium were both alarmed and egocentrically self-righteous over news about Port Breqhamwurth's dire fate. The Port, celebrated as a haven for doctrinairian technologists, conservative scholars and modestly ambitious mercantile industry, was often held up by the Emperium as the shining jewel of Pex'Insava while its more inland sister city of Abyssium was ignored or, worse, villified as an example of the urban disadvantages of unchecked over-industrialization and amoral, heterogenous sociopolitical excess. The people of Abyssium were frightened that Port Breqhamwurth had succumbed to the power of the Gorgahnun invaders, but at the same time they felt that it couldn't have happened to a more smug and self-satisfied collection of hypocrites. That attitude was foolish and it was petty and they all knew it, but at least they took some small pride in that fact that they were, as a community, more honest and more "real" --- whatever that meant.  

Nestled in the roughly pentagonal remains of a collapsed volcanic caldera, Abyssium occupied an uneven geophysical area of nearly 4630 square meters, its gradually-rising underlying terrain creating the illusion that the city was built into a broken bowl, surrounded by a paramagnetic spin-field that reached thirty stories towards the stormy, olive-tinted sky. It was home to over eleven thousand humans living in six administrative clan-centric districts, each with its own prefecture. At each point of the city's geographic pentagon, a collection of five crystalline obelisk-towers had long ago been erected by the city's prior denizens. It was an exotic, somewhat gothic place of stylized marble statue figurines, rib vault architecture and large stained glass windows.

It was also the place that held a Daarke Tekk-cathedral, a multi-story glassy needle of blue-brown topaz and scarlet corundum that had come to be known as the Zuhltann's Tower Shiftport. The Shiftport served as an alter-dimensional matter highway, a jump-chute from which sentient organic beings could travel across the distances of celestial space through energy transferal. Zuhltann's Tower was Dhoumhaunt's destination. It was the place where he'd decided it was safest to meet with the city's resident Qrypfathenne diplomatic representative, an Ambassador named "Amun Prezurbraxynn" whom it was rumored was the long-term romantic consort of the Qrypfathenne people's exiled ruler, Princess-Praetor Meyrahma Dullehah.

Dhoumhaunt had fallen far out of favor with the Princess-Praetor, as had most of the few Anguishers who'd survived the World-Father's lethal Idolator Purge a few solar orbital heliar's past. The Emperium , in creating its treaties with the Qrypfathenne nation, had not wanted to share any territorial governmental or law-keeping authority with the xenophobic and sectarian Anguisher League. The Anguishers had often clashed with the edicts of the Royals Guild, of which Meyrahma Dullehah was the Guildmaster, and so were never given benefit of her official protection. So when the Emperium had claimed and annexed the Pex'Insavan territories of the Qrypfathenne Sovereignty, she had little reluctance in allowing both the Emperium's Ministry of Racial Alignment and its Royal Union of the First Militia, also known as the infamous Ministry of Order, to hunt down and exile the Anguishers. So, to Princess-Praetor Meyrahma Dullehah, Dhoumhaunt was a wanted criminal..., but to Ambassador Amun Prezurbraxynn, a morally-flexible neo-crimelord who was possessed of a much more pragmatic mindset, Dhoumhaunt and his few surviving brethren could still be useful.

That assumed usefulness often worked as a two-way street, beneficial to both Prezurbraxynn and to Dhoumhaunt.

"Ahhh, and who else would we meet on so fine an afternoon as this, but the Quite-Honorable Duke-Elder Dhoumhaunt Parysek Tuhr'caslem Haaksurnah, formerly of the Qrypfathenne Xenos-Nekkrotyr Space Command and more recently a former Judge-Exterminant in the service of the World-Father's Emperium," a richly deep voice said in a sardonic manner displaying an over-abundance of artificial good cheer. "Out and about wandering the fine boulevards of Abyssium, and no doubt fostering boldness and intrepidity amongst those fragile souls shaken by the fall of Port Breqhamwurth to the invading Gorgahnun Horde. Was'nouff Kregahnem, Bond-brother, and the blessings of the Prymathion-Ra'ahm be upon your honored brethren..."

"Uhm, yes, uhh... Qu'ut'Hass-shay Kregahnem, Elder Brother, may you ever walk in the Sight of the Diviner," Dhoumhaunt replied uncomfortably, unaccustomed to using the traditional High-Elden Qrypfathenne salutation between peerage clansmen. After having joined the Anguisher League, he had, like many inductees into the military services of the Hegemonic Emperium, abandoned usage of ritualized tribal and religious etiquette in conversation. Dhoumhaunt always experienced a brief flash of guilt when he found himself stumbling over his fractured recollection of social politesse. In light of his experiences since leaving his kinfolk, engaging in Qrypfathenne ritualized etiquette felt forced and insincere.

Besides, he knew Amun Prezurbraxynn purposefully employed the mannerisms just to shake Dhoumhaunt's self-possessed swagger. During even the best of times, Prezurbraxynn was a mean-spirited bastard. And this was not a moment among the best of times.

"So where is your Viper-born shadow, your delightful Eaufidyann concubine, that Koylrayzur woman?"

Dhoumhaunt suppressed an angry hiss as he answered, "She's not my concubine. You know I would never consort with such a creature. I do not understand why you deem it necessary to taunt me about my association with her. Commissioner Koylrayzur and her associate, the Psyonikant Orakun Maadregul, are otherwise engaged at another location. You need not concern yourself with any greater detail about their activities than that."

"No insult intended, Bond-brother, no insult and no insinuation," Prezurbraxynn said. "I had simply noticed that the three of you appeared to have closely banded together as a kindred unit... Excluding them would have been an unintentionally rude oversight. In any case, Her Eminence, Princess-Praetor Meyrahma Dullehah, sends each of you her warmest regards."

"Oh, well, that sets my stony heart all aflutter," Dhoumhaunt sneered. "Does she still want me dead?"

"She does indeed. Anticipating your violent demise is a fantasy with which she often entertains herself," the Qrypfathenne Ambassador remarked.

Dhoumhaunt sighed.

The two men had set their prearranged rendezvous in a public space, an open area where they could observe whether or not they were being watched or surveilled in any physical way in any direction. They stood just under a corridor entrance and near a round metal table atop the fourth level of a semi-detached platform suspended over a public park. The park lay between two long rectangular buildings that, on its lower street-level floors, housed several retail stores for general goods and a pair of open-air food court-like restaurant eateries. The suites on the floors above the street were offices for various private businesses. It was a location with a minimal need for an Emperium law enforcement or military presence.

Prezurbraxynn had come to the meet in the company of a pair of Fae-Spawn meta-synthetic attendants, both male and both obviously warrior-caste members, though they were not Burssurken-class synthedroids. The thickly-muscled men wore helmeted black and purple tactical combat suits of non-military design, giving them a look more similar to that of Special Urban Protectorate Police rather than soldiers.  Each had a long-barreled blaster pistol in a holster strapped under their right arms.  Tagging along behind the Ambassador and his bodyguards was a tawny-haired, bronze-skinned willowy female in floor-length robes under an olive and blue, long-line bodice of light trauma armor.  She looked to be wholly human, but something about her yellow, full-face triangular tattoo, its apex pointed downwards, hinted at an alien strangeness.

The appearance of Amun Prezurbraxynn himself was another matter, though. He was the height, body mass and morphological configuration of a rather athletic Teshiwahurian man, but cosmetically he was akin to something vaguely more reptilian, resembling an anthropomorphized Desert Horned Lizard from the distant planet Terra. Though he was much smaller physically than Dhoumhaunt, Prezurbraxynn exuded an overwhelming aura of menacing intelligence and psychic dominance that more than compensated for the limitations of his stature, especially when compared to other human men. Dhoumhaunt had once heard another seasoned diplomat describe standing next to the Ambassador to be like standing next to a primed explosive device in the seconds before it exploded.  What little one could see of his exposed flesh past his tailored, plate-armor reinforced, copper and black uniform, was colored deep purple with crimson highlights. Definitely not the standard skin tone of a regular Teshiwahurian human, regardless their blood-lineage. Not for the first time, Dhoumhaunt idly wondered whether or not Prezurbraxynn would admit to being in any way descended from the deadly Saurotetramorphs of The Ke'Tareveel, the sub-orbital moon near Peravendath Harbor on the mother planet below.

"Our rendezvous today is not a matter of routine, as if I were here for some ridiculous status report. I'm not. I am quite aware of the risk we two run in meeting with one another, you know. I realize this is a period of time where the left hand no longer trusts what it is the right hand is doing," Prezurbraxynn said. "I'm here because your machinations have unintentionally managed to stir up an angry swarm of unforeseen complications. It's beginning to get messy. Things are getting out of hand..."

"Well, surely you expected there'd be some degree of fallout from our plan. You should trust that we calculated the possibilities and made allowances. And if you didn't trust us to plan for unexpected eventualities, then you yourself should have made contingencies. But you didn't did you? No, you're relying on us. On me. That way your hands stay clean and you stay far removed from any of the fallout. But if you're not going to accept any of the responsibility, then you cannot complain about the mess," Dhoumhaunt replied calmly, his voice edged with steel. "But now you have me curious. HOW, exactly, are events beginning to get away from us?"

"As you had planned, Lord Hehlgrummyte has been convinced to return to his former profession -- and he has done so with a solemn and enthusiastic thoroughness," the Ambassador answered. "But there's been some blowback. Did you know that Hehlgrummyte's Whyrligaegem has been destroyed? Did you know that The Caged Ones, the Caged Ones for Nargren's Sakes, have impossibly arisen and been sighted leaving the geographic confines of the Uffraza Trail?"

"What? No," Dhoumhaunt admitted, momentarily nonplussed. "I did not."

"I thought not. There's more. While I'm sure you wanted Hehlgrummyte to assault the Emperium military Strategic Operations Center designated as Swordphont 107, did you know that instead of utilizing a standard paramilitary strike force, he has somehow resurrected the Riders of Dreidax Tarathi , the gods-be-damned Wannyshe? Did you know that?" Prezurbraxynn hissed accusatorily, as he allowed his simmering resentment towards the Anguisher to express itself as full-blown anger. "The Caged Ones! The Wannyshe! Monsters! You've managed to set monsters loose on the population of Pex'Insava even as the meerghrug'kein Gorgahnuns put Port Breqhamwurth to the torch! And you know what that means, yes? No Port Breqhamwurth, no Orbital Planetary Mobile Command District, meaning virtually no Emperium military support and that means no Nahztreme --- so that gives the Gorgahnuns free-reign to expand The Wild Zone beachhead beyond its original parameters. They gain a greater strategic foothold on our territories, a larger base from which to stage an attack from on our own lands. So was that the plan all along? To actively turn this moon over to the aliens, to betray your own kind?"

Briefly dumbfounded, Dhoumhaunt had no answer. For several long heartbeats, he didn't speak as Prezurbraxynn glowered at him.

"Idiot," the Ambassador spat as the Anguisher fought to gather his wits. "This was NOT the goal to which I allied myself. Meyrahma Dullehah was right about you, after all."  

"Don't," Dhoumhaunt warned in a low growl.

"Don't what? Tell you the truth? Make you face up to your incompetence? What was supposed to have been a meticulously designed, painstakingly well-constructed, carefully executed coup d'etat has turned into a slaughter. I have it on good authority from my intelligence-gathering apparati that the miserable Shachtferadi'im insurrectionists are gathering here, in Abyssium, right under your metal-plated nose and that your precious Commissioner Koylrayzur of Kithpell Manus has had a hand in covertly arming them, providing them upgraded weaponry," Prezurbraxynn barked snappishly as he continued his tirade. "Did you intend that? No? By Bronah's Thorny Brow, the ONLY thing you seem to be good at is creating chaos! But you tell me 'don't'... Don't what, you ineffective, egocentric thug?"

The para-ionic electric burst was accompanied by a high-pitched whistle that climbed in crescendo until it became a metallic shriek... An explosive burst of white-hot energy poured forth from Dhoumhaunt's gauntleted fist and it punched a sizzling hole through Prezurbraxynn's torso with force enough to toss him shoulder-height into the air. He flopped limply onto the floor to lay still, arms and legs at unnatural angles. Then next, the Anguisher lunged speedily past the Ambassador's fallen body to grab the Fae-Spawn bodyguards, clutching the crumpling chest armor of each man in his massive, glowing fists and lifting them high overhead to quickly slam them to the floor as bubbling, smoking masses of charred meat.

Only the tattooed woman remained and she stared silently at him, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, as he spoke. Hesitantly, hands shaking, she raised her weapon, a telescoping metal pole that she snapped outward to its full length. Distractedly, he catalogued it as an electrophasic javelin and recalled that it emitted gamma pulse-bursts.

"Don't dare be so disrespectful to me," the Anguisher muttered in a thundering growl.

When he brutally murdered the tattooed woman, his fevered mind was already focused elsewhere, planning how he'd regain command of the situation between he and his duplicitous co-conspirators while keeping focus on his own eventual goal --- the complete, clandestine conquest of Pex'Insava, wresting it away from the power of both the Gorgahnuns and the Emperium.

He walked away full of purpose, his armor streaming a cascade of glowing sparks, the cast-off remains of the woman's futile, abortive attack. He left a trail of large, bloody footprints behind him as he exited the ghastly meeting in the public gardens.

                                                                                                 * * *