“You will tell me of this power. Now.” Anguhr demanded.
“Such knowledge must come at a price, General. You must release us, and—”
“You are in no position to make terms!” Uruk bellowed. “Lord, these creatures begin to offend me. I would spare you the outrage.” Uruk lifted his sword into the air.
“I will allow you a chance to please my Field Master.” As Anguhr spoke, a second team of demons carried another heavy mortar tube and shells behind him. “Or I will order my demons to start shelling the relief column of silver beasts and archers that makes its way here. They will die in fragments, not in the glory of combat.”
Gin’s eyes widened. Zaria’s second assault wave must have left Eden as scheduled. Unfortunately, they too materialized far off target as did he and Zaria’s unit. Anguhr’s sentries had detected them, and now prepared to annihilate them from safe distance before they could aid Zaria.
“There is no glory in death, General. No matter its cause.” Zaria voice deepened with bitter resolve. “If you destroy them, we too will die. And all your answers die. As will you, soon after.”
Anguhr grew impatient. “I can order my ship to annihilate all of Old Jove. If you do not tell me what I wish to know. I will destroy Eden.”
“Not even your scythe can rupture Eden’s walls.” Zaria countered. “It is as the Builders wished.”
“I know nothing of your gods. But what are their walls if they strike the Red Giant's fire?” Anguhr asked. “Or if it drifts into the chill of the interstellar void? Such is my power, prisoner.”
Anguhr’s threat forced a pause from his captives. In the distance, demons armed the mortar shells.
“General,” Gin mustered as much reverence in his voice as he could, and chose his words to entice Anguhr. “My leader speaks of a power greater than the energy released by your ship. Why do you think the Dark Urge sent you and Xuxuhr, two Generals, to the Iron Work? To stop us.”
“I was sent to annihilate Eden.” Anguhr said.
Gin controlled his shock over Anguhr’s last words and spoke. “Yes. But not to risk the destruction of Hell.”
“Gin!” Zaria thrust her torso through the walls of thorny demons at her eldest companion.
“Certainly General Anguhr realizes Hell would be in jeopardy if he destroyed Old Jove.” Gin said.
Gin’s following thoughts came to Zaria across their secret wavelengths. ‘And perhaps he will not do so right now, buy us more time, and spare our warriors lost on the Iron Work.’
Anguhr wondered what these aliens and their knowledge could offer him. If Eden had survived this long, certainly their leader did not boast of its defenses. And controlling a force that could destroy Hell would make any leader a galactic power. It was no wonder these aliens fought so well.
“General,” Zaria spoke with confidence. “You must have some hint of self-preservation in that black pit of a mind. You weren’t supposed to be here, were you? You must have doubts about the Dark Urge’s plans. Especially now that her war is near its close. But let me show you that her hunger is false, that all the conquests of the Generals are an act of fear, not need. It will prove we are of value not just about this weapon. It will prove why your Dark Urge is a danger not just to life, but to her warriors.”
“Blasphemy!” Uruk spat, and then cast his gaze up to the silent Anguhr.
Anguhr glanced at the body of Xuxuhr. He thought of his surviving brethren. Ursuhr and Xuxuhr were brutish thralls. Tanuhr was calculating and cunning. Sutuhr was ruthless. He would have destroyed Eden upon contact with the miserable world. Sutuhr, the Devoted, was the most loyal to the Dark Urge. If there were more components to raid from this star-spanning machine, Sutuhr would be the next sent if he was not already en route. Anguhr wondered why Sutuhr was not the one tasked to the Iron Work, first. Where was he now? Anguhr swung forward his massive axe. The blade stopped a hair’s width over Zaria head, then rose to the top of Anguhr’s swing and stopped.
“Obey me!” Anguhr roared. His fury manifested as his massive body tensed to bring down his axe blow. “Or I will destroy you, your warriors, and your world! Tell me where to collect the next element of this weapon, NOW!”
Zaria’s eyes met Gin’s own. He understood, and slowly nodded affirmation.
Anguhr took only Uruk and his massive axe as security when he ferried his prisoners Zaria and Gin to the edge of the Iron Work. Uruk carried a huge rifle that was almost as large as himself. If there was a name for their flying transport, it would be ‘flaming chariot.’ The vehicle looked crude being made from bent beams that blazed a weak crimson compared to the violent red storm they approached. Zaria and Gin endured the ride almost as lashed hunting trophies or living ship figureheads bound at the front by black cables. They dared to venture to the extreme limit of the survivable region. A million or more curtains of red, radiant energy towered ahead. The star’s energy danced or fought with the arcane forces that held it in check.
As they neared the edge, auroras flowed like inverted, colossal waterfalls. Even for the eyes of giants like Anguhr, the rippling light was too vast to take in and nearly too vast to comprehend. The full width of the auroras was far greater than a giant planet’s polar displays, and several planet’s diameters across. Objects more easily discerned cut a line across the overwhelming red and dance of light. Black dashes descended down from space toward the edge of the Iron Work. They appeared to grow more massive as the chariot came closer to the edge of the Iron Work band they traveled across.
Zaria looked up at the long train of ingots cast in Hell and sent to the impossibly vast machine that trapped a star. Zaria wondered if the star appeared red more from the forces that held it in check than from its natural spectrum. She looked back over her shoulder and glimpsed Anguhr. On her journeys, Zaria had seen several intelligent species enjoy the sensation of speed and breeze across their surface. If there was wind, she was certain she would see a smile on Anguhr’s face if most of it was not hidden by his black helmet.
The chariot set down. Anguhr and Uruk debarked, but left Zaria and Gin bound.
Most annoying, Gin thought.
They were not here to see the spectacle of radiation rising from the star. They were here to see the fate of Hell’s ingots. The black processed pieces came to Hell as parts of butchered worlds. Anguhr and the other Generals and sent them beyond spacetime into the maw of Hell. Now Anguhr witnessed the processed results of his efforts. Above them, the long train sent by the Dark Urge appeared as an arc of black, rectangular prisms in motion. The even gaps between the ingots appeared to widen as they sailed closer to the Iron Work. The massive ingots did not touch down or pause at the vast band. They continued passed it toward the star. They immense machine did not accept them for repairs or stored reserves. The ingots drifted down into the intense heat and shifting masses of plasma over the Red Giant’s surface. If Zaria and Anguhr could see the final leg of the ingots journey, they would see them become molten, then vapor, and finally mere ions awash in the roiling, stellar storms.
“You see it, General!” Zaria shouted “You see the lie! Once the Iron Work was finished, the Forge—Hell, no longer needed to make its elements. The Iron Work taps the star itself for power and repairs. Your war is for nothing. The destruction only feeds the twisted mind of your ruler!”
Gin wondered if his newly physical mind was up to the task of processing information such as what he watched unfold on an impossible machine of stellar scale where a being born of light was coated in drying blood from brutal combat and now pleaded for acknowledgement of truth with a giant destroyer of worlds and his demon lieutenant.
Anguhr stayed silent. Uruk seemed to be flexing against imagined cables binding him.
“Maybe they serve the Dark Urge by feeding the star itself.” Anguhr finally said.
“That’s a child’s thought, Lord General.” Zaria countered. “You know the truth. You can see it sailing straight into the stellar fires. There is no purpose to cleave apart
any world. The pieces the Dark Urge sends here are only destroyed. They never become part of anything. There is no great purpose. There is only destruction. The war is a lie!”
Uruk expected Anguhr to strike Zaria or hurl her into the star. Instead he stared at the all-encompassing view of red fires and slowly falling ingots. A different kind of blaze now burned in the General’s narrowed eyes.
Uruk opened his mouth to speak, but felt the heat sting his tongue. He wanted to ask why his Lord Anguhr, General of Hell, and son of the Dark Urge would allow such blasphemy to be spoken. He never asked the question. Personal doubts killed it. His mind had been burning away orthodoxy on its own. It now began cycling the situation and its consequences. Uruk could see the truth. The profits of conquest and the Dark Urge’s own labor sailed into incineration. They didn’t become part of the Iron Work, the great cause of the Dark Urge. Uruk considered the bodies of his fallen demons. Did they truly become part of Hell? Did they merge with her dark heart, or was that another lie? He starred at the red inferno with widened eyes as radiation bathed his face.
“I have witnessed what you wished me to see,” Anguhr turned to Zaria. “I have seen your point. But it changes nothing for you.”
“How could it not?” Gin asked with shock.
“I would wager the General had his own doubts long before this travesty was revealed to him.” Zaria said.
Anguhr stayed silent.
“You need not remain under Hell’s yoke,” Zaria strained to lean toward Anguhr. “Free us, and you will also become free.”
“You will not,” Anguhr replied. “You will serve me. Challenge me, and I will hurl you into the Red Giant and Hell’s inferno.”
“That would be hurling us twice.” Gin said with a tilt of his head.
“You will be in more than one piece.” Uruk explained.
“You are not very sporting creatures,” Gin remarked. “You are more than barbaric. Cruel.”
“Gin!” Zaria snapped.
Uruk aimed his massive rifle at Gin’s head. “But we are truthful,” he said.
“Noted,” Gin replied with a nod.
“Now,” Anguhr boomed. “I came here because I wished to see this. I also wanted Xuxuhr’s demons to see my prisoners bowed. Now that we have both acted the parts, you will obey me. And without question.”
They returned to the access canyon, and well away from the revelation of the ingots’ fate. Anguhr stared at all the darkened eyes of Xuxuhr. The drying blood from his fatal wounds stained the black surface beneath his corpse. It had mingled with demon and alien blood to make a scab-like crust on the vast expanse of black metal. On a solid planet, such a sprawl of slain warriors’ remains might inspire some species to erect a memorial. On the Iron Work the size of the battlefield was proportionately less than a single blood cell in a giant’s heart. Xuxuhr would have no memorial, here. However, Anguhr planned for him to serve one more mission even in death, or at least a certain part of him.
“Lord Destroyer!” Uruk alit beside his General. “Proxis reports he is certain your ship is undetected. The star’s radiation masked our transit. Xuxuhr’s ship has not broken from its course. No other ships are within targeting range.”
“Then prepare, Field Master. I have need of you and some part of this.” Anguhr motioned his axe at Xuxuhr’s body. “Your mission will be arduous and without precedent.”
“Lord, what of our mission against Eden?”
“It is adapted. My plan is now our mission.” Anguhr looked through the red haze across the vast, black field. High above rolled the edges of stellar fire against space. “Do you realize where we stand, Uruk?”
“The significance is not lost on me, Lord. The Great Widow will weave our names into history. Today we have won victory on the very surface of the Iron Work.”
“Will the old spider also record Xuxuhr’s defeat?” Anguhr asked and looked at Uruk. “The first victory on the Iron Work was won by Zaria of Eden.”
Uruk fell silent.
“History’s tangled web also holds the names of the other Generals who fell in service to the Dark Urge. Do you know their names, Uruk? I know their names. Now Xuxuhr joins them on oblivion’s forsaken front. Azuhr was the first of our kind. I am the last.”
“And greatest,” Uruk nodded.
“Even greatness cannot stand against time. We have little of it.” Anguhr sighed. “We must secure as much power as we can before more forces from Eden or elsewhere marshal against our horde. And so I must do something I normally loathe. I must divide our forces, at least partially.”
“Your strategies are always victorious, Lord Anguhr.” Uruk said. “I do not fear. I follow.”
“Good. Because I will send you on a mission away from me.” Anguhr leaned slightly towards Uruk with his burning eyes locked keenly on his lieutenant. “You will carry my standard. However, I cannot be there to guide you. Whatever commands you follow will be your own. You will not have my power nor the strength of the horde behind you. Yet you may face an entire horde that would eat you. I send you, because only you can do this. Much is at stake. I am certain that some power acts to divide the forces of Hell. I aim unify them. Whatever the will of the Dark Urge, we must act on our own. That may seem impossible. I assure you, it is not.”
For a moment, Uruk was silent as he considered Anguhr’s words. He nodded with closed eyes, and then spoke. “We do not act in accord with what I gather to be our original mission. General Xuxuhr and you, Lord Destroyer, here together is strange. I can see it was unplanned. It is odd strategy to overlap Generals.”
“The odd may well become more bizarre.” Anguhr’s voice rumbled deeply. “Even with four eyes, Xuxuhr could not see the purpose or risks of the mission he was tasked. I will avoid his fate. I will not lead us into an ambush because orders bid it so. Nor will I give such commands. I will wage a campaign unlike any before. It has no clear enemy. The path ahead is as hazed as this place. The only certainty will be our loyalty. I will fight for the horde. I ask they do so for me, that you do so, Uruk.”
“My life is yours, Destroyer!” Uruk held his sword before his chest in salute. “You have fought alongside us. You fight what we cannot withstand alone, and never burn us as mere cannon fire to weaken an enemy for your glory. You take fire so we can burn the enemy. Even unrecognized demons see this. I am certain no horde fights as fiercely for their General as we, your demons, because no other General fights as fiercely for his horde. Should you command us to assault Hell, we would think it odd, but our wings would blot it skies as we stormed the portals to quell its flames.”
Anguhr was, for once, stunned. Uruk stood and studied his silent General. The sudden motion of Anguhr’s axe broke the silence. The blade swung down. Xuxuhr’s head shot from his massive body. The collision of axe against the Iron Work vibrated through Uruk.
“Now, Field Master: your mission!” Anguhr boomed. “Take Xuxuhr’s head. Show his horde he has fallen. Let them morn his failure, but you, Uruk, bring me back his ship!”
Gin sensed a vibration in the canyon floor. He stood with Zaria and a throng of demons. However, black cables bound both of them at the waist. Most of the demons pointed their weapons and rifles at Gin and Zaria. The vibration seemed to resonate down from the cliff top high above. Only Anguhr could cause it. Gin could not see the General on the plane above the canyon. Gin mused that he stood in a deep pit canyon yet on the height of technology, however ancient it was. And they were forced to use brute strength to steal a small piece of it. Perhaps that was ironic or appropriate. He also mused that his mind could be seen as a pinnacle of technology. Yet now, petty demons with archaic looking automatic rifles could kill him. That was simply sad.
Gin caught the stare and curling lip of the overseer demon, Solok. Gin sighed, and continued his calculations. Both Zaria and he now discharged their part of the bargain struck with Hell’s venturesome General. The grapnel node was more massive than the demons used as living tractors around the hexagonal column. There
was just enough space for Zaria between the nodes. Each node stood nearly as tall as she was. Zaria was the only creature that was semi-luminous in this increasingly infernal place. Dried blood still clung to her skin. The chariot cables had cut streaks through it. Thin, umber flakes fell from her body as she flexed against the cables wrapped around the grapnel node. More cables bound their hostage warriors. The surviving gulos snarled like angry wolves. The archers remained placid, but their eyes always looked at the demons as targets. Gin hoped they would all not become executed corpses. Gin felt he and Zaria were trapped in the most bizarre situation they could have imagined before leaving Asherah: cooperating with forces from Hell. Even if they acted out of need, it taxed Gin’s understanding of ethics and almost reality, as well.
The demons all stank of the smolder from a thousand worlds they burned. Gin lost himself in abstracts, and continued his efforts to remove the node. He hoped the pall of imprisonment would leave, soon after. In the very least, they did work to retrieve an element of the plan to end Hell’s tyranny. With demons.
Zaria permitted herself a sigh. She stretched against her bonds being careful not to be obvious she was testing their strength. The stench of demons entered her nostrils. She took solace that now Anguhr’s ship no longer threatened Eden. But now they were his prisoners. So far, escape seemed hopeless. She could not manipulate Anguhr while forced to labor with demons. Zaria could see their plight troubled Gin. To calculate the best direction of force would be simple for him, typically. He had yet to place the charges beside the microscopic seams at the base of the node. The demon explosives were inelegant, dagger-like devices. All of her weapons and tools had been confiscated and were now unseen.
Solok controlled the detonation. Zaria hoped his claws were steady. The directed explosions only needed to provide a short moment to sunder the force that held the node. The force unleashed would be lethal to the demons pressed and pulling against it. Still, they met the dangers without fear. Zaria wondered if they had the capacity to be afraid. She wondered if the monstrous creatures thought at all, other than about destruction and mindless worship of their malignant leaders.
Beyond Apocalypse Page 16