Beyond Apocalypse

by Bruce S Larson

  For once, Anguhr was uncertain about setting foot on an alien planet. Briefly. Eden was a world wrapped in space that defied analysis and placed there by powers that rivaled the Dark Urge. Indeed, it was a likely world to find technology that could kill his black queen. No wonder she feared it. Such power could also kill him. Any opponent here would be worthy. He felt an urge to possess such power such as Zaria’s weapon simply to preserve his own life. And also an odd sensation of caution that no strategy or his strength could overcome. He thrust away the notion that his feeling crept towards fear. Anguhr mentally vowed to face this world. He would again lead from the front. He snatched his axe from beside his throne.

  Solok rejoined his Lord, Gin, and Zaria. They stepped off the burning platform separated from his ship’s hull and onto a mountain dale of deep, sapphire grasses. A strike force of demons descended onto the grass in delta formation. They had followed Solok and Anguhr against Zaria’s strong objections. Anguhr paid her concerns no attention, more for Solok’s pride on his first incursion as acting Field Master. The platform returned skyward behind them all.

  A specific mountain rose beyond a narrow highland that bordered the dale. The only faint energy output detected on the planet was along the mountain’s slope. Anguhr didn’t want to directly assault the location. The final weapon component was held in a delicate matrix. Demon claws and rifles may be more a risk than a tactical advantage. This was advice from Zaria Anguhr did follow. He would take Zaria there and retrieve the device, himself. Despite his recent odd feelings, he was still Anguhr, the Destroyer.

  “I have the emanation locked, Lord Anguhr.” Solok reported.

  “As do I.” Anguhr said. “Secure the region.”

  Anguhr took a step towards the mountain, but paused and turned to Solok. “Should anything happen, bring the fire power of my ship on the world.”

  “It shall be done Lord Destroyer!” Solok barked with zeal.

  Anguhr considered his eager lieutenant. He realized he had a long span of training to complete with Solok to temper enthusiasm in favor of prudent violence as he had over so many campaigns with Uruk.

  “But not until something occurs,” Anguhr added.

  Solok saluted with his sword. The other demons followed his lead and did likewise. Anguhr turned and began again toward the mountain.

  “Should you define that something for him?” Zaria asked as she followed Anguhr.

  “No,” Anguhr answered. “Being specific may limit his use of the main guns. If I am harmed, I want this planet destroyed for certain.”

  “I should expect no optimism from a creature of Hell.” Zaria sighed.

  “I am the Destroyer. I will always be that, even after—”

  “Death?” Zaria asked.

  “Do not taunt or delay me.” Anguhr said and kept walking with landscape crossing strides.

  “Then, immortal General, follow!” Zaria sprinted ahead.

  Anguhr noted it may not be Solok’s zeal he needed to curb.

  As on the Iron Work’s pyramid, Anguhr thought to draw his axe and cleave Zaria in two. When they reached the foot of the mountain, she kept her swift pace up the steep surface of ice, blue stone, and granite. Anguhr climbed behind her. His fingers dug into solid stone. Loud cracks sounded with each new grip. His progress was fast. Zaria was faster. She climbed up the sheer mountain face as if she was water running down a smooth slope. Yet, Anguhr only felt a need to assert himself for pride, not control. He surprised himself upon realizing this. And then he climbed faster.

  Cold, sharp winds and flecks of ice blew across Anguhr’s skin as he ascended. The ice instantly melted on contact creating a wake of steam. His heat kept icicles from forming, but any liquid that fell from his body refroze in the cold and flew off in the wind. He saw Zaria disappear over the edge of a high cliff. Anguhr reached the cliff’s edge. The energy reading was along a flat outcrop. It projected from the sheer slope. Something had cut a half-conic section from the mountainside and fused it onto the slope below the excised cave. Anguhr stood on the outcrop. Zaria had waited for him. He expected another façade and another discovery beyond it. There were massive icicles blocking their entrance. However, Anguhr was more surprised by the emotions expressed on Zaria’s face. She appeared expectant, perhaps slightly joyful. She was not triumphant over her faster climb, or fearful of releasing a dreadful power. He found this curious. Yet, all he could do was move forward. It was the path to complete the mission, and a personal compulsion he could not fully understand.

  After her capture, Zaria had changed from prisoner to guide. Now she changed again into a luminous generator. Warm sunlight and heat radiated from within her, turning her metallic green armor into contoured, emerald prisms. She turned and raised her hands to the massive icicles. They melted but did not flow away. The water stayed as conic waterfalls that neither began nor ended. Zaria’s inner light ebbed. She turned and beckoned Anguhr, and then walked through the curtain of static waterfalls.

  Anguhr followed. He was relieved he did not get wet. Inside was the exterior of a luminous temple built from white marble infused with gold. Two rows of seven, massive columns curved along quarter-circle arcs. Circular capitals topped the columns. All of them sat on bases of gold. The column arcs flanked a gilded, marble archway. Darker masses rested within. There were no solid walls. Cold air flowed through the chamber. The temple was a not a fortress but a celebration of strength and also freedom.

  The brilliance and beauty were lost on Anguhr. He focused on the guardian statues that stood out from each column row. They were carved from pure white stone. Each one wore armor and held a spear. They were as tall and commanding as Anguhr. Their model could have been his near twin. The entire structure looked built for giants like him. Anguhr grabbed the head of the statue to his left. A cracking sound echoed.

  “No!” Zaria yelled too late.

  The statue’s head came free in Anguhr’s hand with a loud snap. He brought it close to his helmet and stared at its features.

  “Yes, it also looks like you.” Zaria took in a deep breath.“But couldn’t you just stare at it in one piece? Must you destroy everything?”

  Anguhr cast his fiery gaze from the head to Zaria.

  “I hope in time you learn to respect architecture of alien worlds,” Zaria continued. “I guess, for now, that’s an idiotic hope.”

  More cracks echoed across the temple cave before the statue’s head exploded into bits in Anguhr’s grip.

  Zaria blinked. “I wish to foster defiance within you, but I admit when its directed at me, it grows tiresome.”

  Anguhr arched his left eyebrow at Zaria’s mentor tone. “The weapon,” he droned.

  “Yes.” Zaria shook her head slightly, and then walked through the archway.

  The temple’s interior was a negative in color and shape to its outer half. The two more column arcs completed a circle. The interior columns were dominantly black and swirled with marble-like patterns of deep purple and red hues. Another, black archway stood between the black column arcs. Beyond them looped streams of liquid obsidian. They floated above the flat, stone floor. The dark streams curled like flattened snakes around large torchères that flashed on with intense, red fires. The flames and black liquid interacted in almost aural motions.

  “This place is not a military installation.” Anguhr said looking across the inner temple.

  “Are you sure?” Zaria asked.

  “Yes.” Anguhr looked passed the black columns at the streams and flames. “Although lies and deception grow as dense as grass where you walk.”

  “A necessary evil in the face of the greater one you serve, General. And her evil is not needed. She is driven by fear.”

  “I should kill you for blasphemy.” Anguhr said as he followed Zaria between the rows of black columns.

  “And yet you do not,” Zaria said confidently with her back still towards Anguhr. “Among Generals, you are unique.”

  “What is this place? Its character is s
plit.”

  “It’s a temple,” Zaria said. Her walking pace was now slow and measured. “This is its antechamber. The architect built the luminous outside to his own aesthetic tastes. However beautiful, the person it was built for did not share his appreciation for light and bright color. As it was a temple built for her adoration, her architect lover had the second half built to her liking.”

  “I like this part better.” Anguhr said.

  “Of that I had no doubt.” Zaria remarked as she walked through the black archway.

  Beyond the arch was an inner chamber made from another conic section cut from the mountain. Following the temple’s theme, its shape opposed the preceding antechamber. Instead of entering an already wide cave, entrants walked from the comparatively small arch at the center of the curving wall into a vast chamber. Beyond the archway, the ceiling suddenly rose into a high tapper. The space needed to be enormous. Even scaled down for the interior of a mountain, the façade of a quarter hemisphere of a sun was colossal. It loomed directly opposite to the entrance. The sun’s surface burned a warm and radiant orange red and was as dynamic as a true star.

  More pairs of columns rose toward the sun. High arches connected the columns with smaller stars as keystones. Each arch rose progressively taller towards the quarter sun. The sets of columns and arches rose to towering heights until the last arch was only visible as a narrow line far overhead holding a bright dot at the center. The entrance to the next chamber was an arch shape directly ahead in the sun no taller than the black archway behind Anguhr and Zaria. The sun’s granular surface depicted a younger star contrasted to the scarlet face of the Red Giant. Anguhr paused before following Zaria through the arch way to the dark area beyond. For an instant, he reacted to the sun’s image as if actual stellar fires raged. He then strode through the archway.

  The next chamber was as black as true space. There appeared to be no floor. Zaria was walking across an invisible plain. Anguhr followed her. Immediately inside was another high but robust arch. The arch after it was separated at it apex. Four sets of split arches followed the first. The third set was the highest. Anguhr realized they mimicked fingers like his with touching thumbs forming the first arch and then four sets of fingers flaring out as if releasing a captive. The captive shone brilliantly between the last two, widely split arches. It was the center of the slowly spinning galaxy.

  “He was to give her the galaxy.” Zaria said as she looked up. “In the end, he gave her his life. Life. A noble cause.”

  Anguhr dismissed her comment. His eyes were drawn to what appeared to float just below the immense image of the galaxy. It was a golden column base. More captivating was the solid black object that hovered above it.

  Zaria stopped. She turned sideways and looked at Anguhr. She stiffened. Before her voice had been at ease. Now it became solemn. “The temple was never completed. Not fully. This is my addition.”

  Zaria motioned to the black object. It was half as tall as Anguhr. Dark. Ominous. Yet it was somehow familiar to him. Anguhr felt pulled by it. He strode passed Zaria to face it. Although massive for its kind, it was a long, black sword. Its steel was obviously the same that made his axe. The sword had also been forged in Hell. Anguhr halted as if struck by the weapon. He knew its description well. He designed the flourishes of his axe after the first weapon wielded by the first General. It had resonated with some part of him. For the first time in his existence, Anguhr felt weak.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “This is the sword of Azuhr.” Zaria said as she neared.

  “I know!” Anguhr shouted. “Somehow I know.”

  “You know because you have seen it before.”

  Anguhr jerked to his side to stare at Zaria at his right.

  “Although then, your eyes were not afire as they are now.” Zaria looked at the sword. “Then your mind was free to absorb information as well as it could at so young an age.”

  “What is this?” Anguhr bellowed.

  “This is a shrine to Azuhr,” Zaria answered. “It was intended as a temple to honor an impossible love. A union of two lives born to oppose each other. The architect was Sargon. Yes, the greatest of the Khans.”

  “Impossible!” Anguhr roared.

  “You say I lie. Yes.” Zaria said. “Bringing you here was a deception because you would not come if there was no prize of war. But in all your conquests have been for a lie. Think of what I showed you on the Iron Work. The parts of planets you sundered headed straight into the sun. This is also a hard fact. But this is your legacy!”

  “Legacy?” Anguhr shook his head. He had never seen an image of a Khan. He had never thought to wonder more about them beyond history abstracts made before he took command of his ship. Khans were a blight on the galaxy. At least, so said the teachings of the Dark Urge. Anguhr thought of the statues outside the temple. He looked at Zaria. He thought of his own image.

  “Sargon was like you, also a conqueror.” Zaria said stepping closer to Anguhr. “But he was also a philosopher king. His empire was vast. His leadership united his kind. Each of them had united great tracts of the galaxy. Their inevitable alliance made them think they were no longer mere servants to the great urge that propelled them. They came to their mother and asked to be seen as her equals. This was not foreseen.”

  Zaria paused. She lowered her head as if weighted by looking backward in her mind. She took a shallow breath and continued.

  “They had been sent out to quell fear of all alien powers through contact, and if necessary, through conquest. They became powers themselves. Instead of admiration for her children’s’ success, their mother saw their request to be equals as insurrection, as betrayal. She reacted out of fear.

  “Their mother’s wrath made her fragile mind become black. The mother of the galaxy’s greatest leaders became their enraged enemy. She set her mind on the destruction of her rebellious children, and the annihilation of their work. A new child was born. Azuhr. She was created not from life and hope, but from spite and fear. Her mother was now and forever the Dark Urge.”

  Anguhr anticipated the last phrase, but it still made him react by instinctively pulling back his shoulders.

  “Hell’s queen knew a name and purpose before the war. As did I. I was also the mother of the Khans. Their genes and design came from the true Eden. The Khans, or Keepers as they were first called, were bathed in fire. It was only to temper their will. Their ships and technology were dilutions from the Builders’ technology that created the Forge, now Hell. The Keepers were supposed to defend the Builders’ legacy and the fragile mind that became the Dark Urge. She was to know great champions protected her. However, the Keepers became champions for themselves. They reimagined themselves as the Khans. I suppose all children grow in ways you can never foresee.

  “So did Azuhr. Even born from Hell and commanding a horde of horrific demons, she was also made from the stuff of nature. The Khans could fight well, but Azuhr was a warrior to perfection. In time, the Khans sued for peace from her onslaught. Seeing an opportunity to collect her enemies in one place and kill them all, Azuhr agreed to the summit.

  “There she met the delegate and chief Khan, Sargon. Nature took its course over the reluctance and suspicions of them both. How could it not? Sargon was the first creature Azuhr ever met with a body similar to hers and of dimorphic, sexual form. There seemed a chance for peace born from love, or at least physical passion. But suspicion is also a persistent force. The other Khans came to fear their most powerful member being in league with the dreaded Azuhr. So did the Dark Urge who became fearful that hostilities had stopped before all the Khans were killed.

  “In the time that Sargon and Azuhr knew together, he built this place. It was originally on his capitol. In that same time of Sargon and Azuhr’s union, the other Khans gathered their strength and resolve. They struck. Their surprise and combined might stunned the lovers. Sargon fought against his own kind and former allies. Azuhr slaughtered all in her path. But the en massed power of t
he seditious Khans granted one boon. Azuhr was mortally wounded. Her damaged ship gained speed until it flew above the galactic plane and soared unguided into the black void. It kept sailing faster, until it flew beyond relative ken. She was lost. The heartbroken Sargon had already fallen to his siblings’ attack.

  “They were defeated.” Anguhr breathed deeply as if he lived the tale.

  “In a sense,” Zaria said. “Azuhr had undertaken one last ploy before her final battle. It would be either her ultimate defeat by the spite of her creator, or long term revenge taken by her heir. Her passion with Sargon had produced the heir to her sword. Azuhr knew to keep the child would risk its death, and that such a risk would make her vulnerable. More so, I think, she loved the child. She knew the Khans would destroy it because it was part Hell-born. There was only one power strong enough to protect it and give it the means to enact her revenge. She sent the child to Hell. Born of a General and a Khan, Azuhr felt only the Dark Urge could nurture her child. Azuhr knew the Dark Urge might destroy it to punish her, or kill it out of fear. Yet she knew her mother’s sinister mind would also see her plan of revenge, and likely enjoy it for its dark design. She did.

  “I found Azuhr’s sword and brought it here. It was adrift in space among other wreckage in the long-cooled wake of her ship. Hardly a trace of her remains anywhere. Other than here.” Zaria moved close and stared straight into Anguhr’s burning eyes. “And other than you.”

  Anguhr stepped back.

  “Their story is yet to end,” Zaria continued. “The Dark Urge had her new General, Sutuhr, rip apart Sargon’s ship that held your infant form. She stopped him from tearing you apart and wiped his mind. Then she took you into her own, fiery womb. You were reborn to serve her. Instead of a massive, black sword, you were given an enormous axe. But you are so like your mother. Your true mother.”

  In unthinking motion, Anguhr drew his axe from his back. He stepped back and faced Zaria as if she were all his enemies focused into one. He had moved his own mind and emotions away from the Dark Urge, yet had yet to sever the bond, fully. She was still his only emotional link to creation. And now the bond was revealed as both corrupted, bizarre, and also maternal. Anguhr’s taught emotions snapped.