Some color approached the new, head-strewn wasteland. A tremendous moth colored in brilliant pastels and nearly as massive as Anguhr drifted down from the sky. It was another combination of biology and sorcery. Yet it did not arrive to fight the General. Its landing created a great, fetid gust that blew some of the Hydragon’s blood off Anguhr’s armor creating crimson rain behind him.
On the moth’s back glowed one of the planet's sentient inhabitants. It was either D’nai Liung’s greatest warrior, greatest wizard, or greatest fool. A head bobbed at the creature’s front. Although it was much smaller than Anguhr, it bore a face that closely mimicked Anguhr’s features visible beneath the General’s helmet but with overly bulbous cheeks and brow. It also mimicked the fire in his eyes with its own blue luminescence. The rest of its body was a stout, glowing mass shaped as a rippling cylinder. The native moved ahead of the moth’s wings and leaned down. It seemed sickened by the carnage and afraid to set foot on the spilled blood. As the blood soaked everything and its foot was a single, muscular sole beneath its body, that was a problem. It paused, but then sallied across the severed heads, avoiding the teeth.
Behind the native envoy, the gigantic moth raised its wings for a downbeat to launch itself away from the poisoned deathland Anguhr had created. Instead, it suffered a seizure and pitched over, dead. The envoy paused, and then continued on to Anguhr.
“Great warrior of Hell!” The envoy stopped within Anguhr’s shadow. “Great champion! We bid you greetings and bring entreaties. You have slain the offering we sent to your great and powerful presence. We wish—”
“Do you have any more monsters for me to fight?” Anguhr asked. He tore his axe out of the slain Hydragon.
“Well, no, your immense greatness. May we off--oouuaah!”
Anguhr swung his axe again. The flat of its blades slapped the envoy and launched him into distant clouds.
Anguhr drew a deep breath and regripped the tacky handle of his huge, black and now sticky weapon. He called to his demon Field Master. “Uruk.”
Uruk had circled patiently as Anguhr practice cleaving technique on the Hydragon. He alit on a pile of its heads.
“Lord Anguhr, you are again the Destroyer.” Uruk drew his sword and brought it to his chest as a salute.
“It is time,” Anguhr droned. “Launch the horde.”
Uruk nodded. “Shall I command then to assault the skulls, Lord?” Uruk raised his sword to swipe at an imaginary assault of the lifeless heads.
Anguhr replied with a low growl. However, from Anguhr’s great height, all he could see was a landscape of Hydragon heads and toxic rivers of its blood flowing out to poison lands beyond.
“Well, perhaps we will come back to this one.” Anguhr slowly nodded. “Their own weapon doomed their world. We can return should her infinite blackness bid us scythe this planet.”
“You are the wisdom of the Dark Urge, Lord Destroyer.” Uruk bowed. “All praise the Dark Urge.”
Anguhr growled again.
Uruk stayed silent. He would not test Anguhr’s tolerance any further. He watched Anguhr stomp through the heads. The General’s giant strides meant he was some distance away in a short time. Uruk assumed his Lord's actions were the will of the Dark Urge, no matter the seeming difference of result. They all lived to serve the will of Hell. But such will required bloodshed in greater torrents than Lord Anguhr had unleashed from the Hydragon's necks. At times, that was even the blood of demons. His General never sent them into battle without consideration of their sacrifice, and was willing to place himself between them and forces that demon strength alone could not overcome. He did this against the Nabaton. Even normal demon minds appreciated valor and loyalty, and that it did not flow one way from the horde to its General.
Uruk resolved that enacting Lord Anguhr’s will would be his personal, sacred duty. He extended his wings and raised his sword again to make praise. The words were meant for his ears alone. Even unheard by any other, it was still a shocking evolution in the mental orthodoxy of demons.
“Glory to the Dark Urge. But may all praise be to our Lord, General Anguhr.”
Tanuhr made his plans. He sat back on his bridge as debris from the confederated armada tumbled passed his ship. His plotted course intercepted the enemy fleet and then continued to the system’s main star. Its radiation would boost the main sail and relativistic compensators and reduce transit time. It was all calculated to occur in rapid succession. However, the enemy ships were more agile than Tanuhr had expected. Plus, his mental distraction from the ancient ship’s data cost him additional seconds.
Tanuhr’s ship finally deployed its main sail and his demons took their stations. He calculated the system where Anguhr fought based on the likely course Hell would assign him compared to all other Generals’ campaigns. Anguhr was the last General to leave Hell. There was only so much galaxy. If he was correct, he would immediately contact Anguhr on arrival. If not, he may need to annihilate some hapless planet to mask his reason for entering the system. Tanuhr hoped some large rock in stellar orbit would still be intact near Anguhr so they could meet on neutral ground. With Anguhr’s reputation as the Destroyer, Tanuhr was uncertain if anything other than dust would exist. Once his ship made the jump, timing would be critical. The information must be shared before suspicion labeled them both as rebellious, and worse, as heretics.
Tanuhr glanced at his all too clean silver spear. Time was a spear point, forever cutting forward and opening potential. Time marched in a perpetual frontal assault. It never doubled back or ceded captured territory. Time was a one-way bridge to the next enemy. It thus brought greater glory to the Dark Urge, of course.
A bubble of time encapsulated the fiery ship as the main sail charged. Soon it would take the perpetually burning mass to another point in space. A momentary release of energy conquered the astronomical distance. Tanuhr felt it was akin to firing the main guns. In the jump, the projectile and gun were the same. The trajectory occurred in an instant. The main sail was nothing like a great sheet of its namesake. It interacted with the fabric of spacetime as a nimbus around and through the ship. A jump brought a brief moment of white light to the dark lives of Hell's minions, not that they appreciated the aesthetic irony. For as soon as the main sail’s power ebbed, they made war again.
This time, Tanuhr suddenly realized his war, both mentally and for the Dark Urge, was at an end. There was a great variable he had not included in his calculations. He hoped his ordered thoughts had kept out intrusions into his mind and hid his plans and the revelation that caused them. He was wrong. A spider appeared before him. Its image filled the bridge, although its sight was for Tanuhr alone. The Great Widow hung in her entangled web, waiting for prey. She twitched her dark legs. A strand of ethereal silk that stretched across spacetime snared Tanuhr’s mind. Only two Generals had been lost during Hell’s war. Tanuhr became the third.
CHAPTER TEN
Sunlight had come to the garden. Zaria watched the artificial sun moved across the sky as it had for countless days since a protective machine encased the world. Before then, the world orbited its true star as a free planet. The creatures on its surface and ocean’s came mostly from that era when other machines kept intense light at bay from the star that had become too bright for life so near. Those machines were massive and had survived many eras of ecology sheltered below them. However, even they could not withstand the star’s later phase. Its blazing surface did not become even brighter, but more vast.
The star grew and became scarlet. The living world was plucked from doom as its parent star expanded from a sun, once colored yellow in the blue sky, into the Red Giant. The giant was bound, the planet placed in safe keeping. An image of the parent star long before its changes was made to rise and fall as life continued in another great machine. Just as the Builders, this machine was unseen and unknowable to the creatures inside it. Life thrived. Some lifeforms more than others.
Gin was created to run the machines that protected the world
. He was at first a simple mind, but in time his awareness and intellect expanded. He could not interact with the ecology his machines protected. He could watch life. He could not alter it. Just as the sun over the world, the ecology was artificial. Life continued, but aberrations arose. Only one region resisted chaos. Gin was empowered to keep it separate from threats because the Builders had special affection for the soft-skinned creatures it harbored. That zone stayed seemingly perfect. But in that idyllic, grassy plain, the soft creatures that might have retained the power to bring balance instead were perfectly adapted to eating grass. Gin could do nothing but watch. He was alone.
Then, new sunlight shined and relieved Gin of his discontent. Zaria came to Asherah. She was like Gin in many ways. They shared traits from common ancestry. She worked within Gin’s machines and also the planet they surrounded. Zaria could act where Gin could not. Asherah became her world. Under her guidance, balance was restored. The machines and the planet’s ecology came into harmony. The world garden became Eden.
In time’s flow outside Eden, Hell shattered balance in the galaxy. The planet and machines of Asherah were well hidden. If the Dark Urge sought them, and Zaria was certain she did, then such protection alone would not be enough as Hell grew more powerful. Zaria sought to preserve life and thwart the Dark Urge. In recent days, Zaria had earned a partial victory with the Xa’rol. Sutuhr was taken out of the war, for now. Other General’s were just as powerful, and bolder. Zaria’s other efforts on alien worlds were less successful, or utter failures. To defeat all of Hell, Zaria would need to be very bold. She conceived of a power that could save Asherah and even destroy the Dark Urge. It would be the ultimate weapon in this age of war. But to use weapons, a force needs warriors. She did not have time to recruit or build more allies from the alien systems that still survived. She would need to act in the here and now. The gardens of Eden would provide her the basis of her warriors to fight Hell.
Sunlight moved over the garden. It was not the plants Zaria observed, but the animals among them. A hawk flew in high circles above a tropical canopy. Its mate rested on a blue cliff far below. She preened her wing and dislodged a loose feather. It fell like an arrow into a cleft beneath her talons. Moving across Eden’s temperate zone, Zaria saw a massive heard along the edge of a conifer forest. The neoamynodonts were enormous grey creatures descended from mega fauna that survived seeming impossible odds and resisted extinction. Instead of ancestral horns, their only defense was a thick hide. These grazers immense size meant self defense needed little effort, save a twitch or perhaps a shrug if the predator was persistent. Zaria would need the aggression their distant ancestors showed against predators of more proportional and thus more dangerous size.
On the verge of the white, arctic expanse, Zaria came over a pack of sabens. They tore apart the carcass of a capreol they killed as the rest of its heard sprinted towards rising glaciers. Streaks of red fell across the icy snow as the sabens fed. Their compact, powerful forms made excellent, living weapons. Zaria could see their teeth and claws amplified and augmented to rend not mere flesh but demon hide. To the south, an ancient species lived in darkness save for when it spawned. Then their dark, hard bodies rose to flow across ancestral beaches as living waves. Over the eons, the shape of predators and other life, the chemistry of the ocean, and the shape of the land had changed. Unknown to the arthropods, their very planet had changed its location in space. Nevertheless, their life cycle continued. Now, Zaria considered changes in the hard-shelled creatures for her cause.
Zaria’s light could penetrate more deeply than the artificial sun. Normal light traveled within the tissues of leaves beyond the walls of energy giving chloroplasts to the insides of their thylakoid structures. Zaria could see the plant’s genes and touch them. She could do so with animals as well. Eden’s creatures gave her strong foundations. Under her guidance, Gin’s machines would do the rest. From them, new life would rise without the constraints of natural selection and time. Zaria would direct the genesis of Eden’s warriors.
Zaria traveled across the blue-green planet, but avoided one area. It was the same site Gin kept separate. What lived there gave her dread. She watched over and protected them as she did with all life in Eden, and as she had tried on worlds beyond. But she shunned direct contact with the separated creatures. The twisting chain of events that led to Hell and its war began with the ancestors of those placid grazers. They shared their ancestry with the powerful beings who built the Forge, the Iron Work, and Asherah. Hell was an aberration of the Builders’ legacy. So were the creatures in what Zaria thought of as the garden of lament. The loss of potential, of what they could have become versus the dependant little things they were now caused her great sorrow.
Zaria completed her search and lamentation. Her warriors were chosen. Now they needed to leave her mind and be born for war. Like all children, monstrous or frail, they would need guidance. She would join them and stand beside them to battle against the terror of Hell’s vicious soldiers. She would not do this by projection or in thought alone. Zaria would take physical form.
Sunlight coalesced. Zaria preferred to be a mother, or at least a guiding, feminine force. She could stay feminine, as was her nature. However, for this mission Zaria would also become a warrior. The body she chose was close to human in appearance, but at the species' physical zenith. And then amplified. A true human would look up to Zaria with a strained neck. A knowing smile beneath luminous green eyes would look back down across strong limbs and graceful masses. Long blonde hair flowed from her head and behind her. Her tresses, of course, shimmered with the radiance of sunlight. Zaria’s new form was tall, although Hell’s Generals would still stand over her. This she planned. Not standing eye to eye could trick their infernal minds that an opponent was weaker. She would not want to face them, but would use every advantage if she did.
Zaria imaged a weapon. She recalled one warrior that held a massive sword. Zaria witnessed her use it to devastating effect. Zaria’s sword would be as long, but more elegant for speed as befit a being of light. More sun’s rays became cooling steel. Zaria’s two-handed sword rested in her hands. The shape of its double, cutting edges rippled like flame and the arcs of sun storms. A sun blazed at the center of the hilt. Zaria raised her sword to the image of the sun above, and brought it to her glowing body. She became clad in emerald armor. The jade plates contoured to her form. She had recast herself for war.
Zaria thought of the female legend with the massive, black sword. To Zaria, she was a kind of bastard daughter. A great failure of Zaria led to the dark warrior’s creation. Zaria’s preceding work was re-appropriated, twisted, used as the basis for the powerful warrior. Zaria had hoped to keep peace and end fear. Instead, a new force was born and a war began that still raged. The bastard daughter could have been a true goddess of war. Her direct mother was the goddess of darkness, but Zaria kept her aspect of light, even to fight. The great warrior she recalled had been created to burn life. She was the first of Hell’s Generals. She was Azuhr, scion of the Dark Urge.
Even at the dawn of the new, black age, a ray of nature shone through. Azuhr, the First, was either redeemed or destroyed by love. Nature, desire, found a way to assert life as unparalleled war raged on. Azuhr’s own life became forfeit, but she left a legacy that now stalked the stars. The legacy might become Zaria’s greatest threat or, if treated with great care, a potential ally. Zaria would not risk leaving the fate of the galaxy to such chance. She hoped to complete her powerful weapon. When that was hers, then she could worry about the unexpected progeny of Hell.
Zaria sheathed her sword.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ursuhr stood on his hull above his bridge. The red fires of his ship curled around him. He looked up at the stars and plotted the location of Hell so far away. He took an instinctive breath, and looked back across the global devastation he’d wrought for that distant, dark world. Below his ship lay another planet with its civilization in flames. His ursine ears could onl
y hear the roar of the flames in the atmosphere rising from inside his ship. The roar seemed to mimic the intense power of the scythe that arced out from his ship’s bow. It was dangerous even for him to stand this close to its energies. Plasma torrents formed and spun near enough for Ursuhr to feel their charge. The fleet and armies of the planet lay dead. Now the world itself was ripped to pieces.
Sensors watched for an enemy daring and powerful enough to attack Ursuhr’s ship at its most vulnerable. At least, as close to vulnerable as the warship could be. Ursuhr himself could jump at an enemy ship and smash it with his maul as his horde swept out as the equal to many fleets. Still, with his main weapons off line, this was a nervous as Ursuhr ever became. His greatest annoyance was not causing but merely watching destruction. Cutting apart planets was tedious work. He was glad for a distraction that began as a crackle across his personal frequency. Ursuhr returned to his bridge.
“Lord! We have what you desire.” Martis shouted in his rasping tones as Ursuhr entered.
“The information is now complete?” Ursuhr asked as he sat on his throne.
“Yes, the demon scans on the surface provided the final data.” Martis nodded.
“Make use of it. I will have what I seek.” Ursuhr said.
“As you command, mighty Lord.” Martis bowed. “But it will take time.”
“Then start. Now.”
Chains. Links. Bonds across a body. Bindings to the past. Some beings wished to snap them all. However, some bonds were stronger than even a massive demon’s strength. General Xuxuhr enjoyed ripping apart the bonds he could break. He enjoyed ripping apart most things, especially planets. He sundered geology and buildings with massive chains that had once bound him but now served as his weapons of choice. Yet he was still bound to a master. She was the Dark Urge. She was the mother of shadow and horror. Horror was certainly and inherited family trait.
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