War of the World Makers

by Reilly Michaels

  Next, a voice, from everywhere and nowhere, booming far louder than Empress Elizabeth and melding with the thunder:

  "THE WORLD MAKERS BRING FORM TO CHAOS!"

  Temujin Gur's voice. All human sound in the hall stopped in mid laugh, like a talking man shot dead by a musket ball.

  "ROYALTY SERVES THE WORLD MAKERS!"

  These words stunned the nobles into further acts of fear and confusion, and then, more gasps and shrieks from the crowd as the giant black stick suddenly swiveled upright and lowered to the floor. The black shadow figures stopped, turned and leapt towards it. Drawing near, their human form was lost, for the stick, acting like a magnet, snapped them forward and absorbed them until all had vanished. Once done, only it remained, ominous and still. The thunder dimmed, as did the sickly yellow light, and all the candles in the Great Hall flickered magically back to life. The fetid odor vanished also, and Freddie could once more smell the roasted meats of the banquet.

  At that point, the stick became a man.

  How insane, how terribly insane!

  Both women and men fainted at the sight of the ungodly transformation. A few slumped in their chairs while others smacked tables head first, their bodies toppling to the floor as the stick shortened but grew thicker in seconds, contouring and shaping itself like hot tar into a single human body. Before the last noble hit the ground, the thing popped with a loud finger snap into Temujin Gur.

  And he smiled, so happy was he!

  His arms lifted up and out, his hands open, and he revolved in a circle, looking at all the nobles as if seeking applause for the performance.

  "BRAVO!" Empress Elizabeth shouted.

  She rose to her feet and clapped. The shocked and reeling nobles began to imitate her, a few at a time, until all of them stood clapping and shouting "Bravo, Bravo!" All except for Freddie. She glared at them with disgust and cared not a jot if she made the Empress mad by remaining seated. She then noticed, far to her right between the tables, her father's castle guard in two firing lines, one kneeling, the other standing to the rear, their gleaming muskets raised and prepared to cut the Mirza down at father's command. But as the Great Hall rumbled with sounds of approval, the guards lowered their muskets at father’s command.

  "Thank you! Thank you!" Temujin Gur said and lowered his arms. Empress Elizabeth sat down and quieted herself. The nobles took note and did likewise. He continued, "You witnessed the power of my magical yarrow. It is the power to dry oceans and wither forests ... But we are almost done here." He paused, still smiling, and shouted to nowhere in particular, "Now, I call on Prince Manuchar of Abkhazia!"

  Gur turned to stare at the Prince who sat on the Russian side of the hall. The Prince stared back at him, looking confused; but as Gur's stare intensified, quieting the Great Hall to perfect silence, the Prince steeled himself with as much defiance as he could muster. Freddie admired him for that, and realized this Prince Manuchar to be very different when compared to the other Russian nobles. From a principality in Georgia, heavily influenced by the Ottoman Empire, he was rumored to be an enemy of Empress Elizabeth. Apparently, here at castle Bärenthoren, the Empress practiced the ancient maxim: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Freddie knew she hated anything with a hint of Ottoman influence, and Prince Manuchar fit the type: flaring black mustache on a stern face beneath a cap rimmed with bear fur, a silken brown shirt, white sash, and baggy dark pants. Only the gold head-rings on his fingers, and his regal bearing, suggested he was of noble blood.

  "Prince of Abkhazia! Come to me!" Temujin Gur shouted, and laughed in a jovial fashion. Many of the nobles chuckled also, apparently becoming amused at the baiting of a noble from Georgia who most of them intensely disliked anyway.

  "Prince of Abkhazia! Come TO ME!"

  Prince Manuchar obeyed in his own fashion. With one arm he roughly pushed aside a massive porcelain centerpiece that looked like the Athenian Acropolis, stood from his chair and leapt atop the dinner table with a loud bang. Smiling and whistling a Georgian folk tune, he jumped to the floor and strolled towards Temujin Gur, his head held high. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but the happy Mongol cut him off:

  "So you are a proud man, Prince Manuchar. Let us test your pride after you lose your head!"

  Upon saying that, a black yarrow stick darted from Temujin Gur's sleeve and rose to hover at attention before his chest. It glowed a dull green, and the Mongol warlock, still smiling, waved his open hand in a chopping motion, whereupon the astonished Prince lurched upwards, his legs kicking as he flew into the air. His body jerked back and forth above the crowd like a struggling catch on a fishing line, and he shouted, "In Allah's name, no more!" before Gur's spinning finger caused him to twirl round and round. The Mongol obviously took great delight in humiliating him for Empress Elizabeth's benefit.

  Unknown to Freddie, fixed on the image of Prince Manuchar who had begun hurtling towards her, Empress Elizabeth's eyes flamed imperious with power. She relished the terror of the Prince. All who dared to steal glances at her saw this, for the power of the Mirza translated to more power for the Empress, and a being of such awesome power must be feared at all times.

  Truly, Empress Elizabeth now appeared power drunk.

  The Princess von Anhalt, however, remained speechless. The body of the Prince halted and dangled before her at least ten feet above the floor. His face was white with horror, his pants darkening as he pissed them. Such a man could face enemy armies and die with honor, but this insane yarrow magic of Temujin Gur terrorized him.

  How could it not?

  Without warning, and despite her own shock, Freddie felt the now familiar warmth of words heating in her. Another burst of magical aria perhaps? It must be, else why would the Prince be hovering before her? But she was not afraid. She knew a great power now resided in her, one as natural as laughter and tears. How long would it last? She did not know. Temujin Gur darkly coaxed it forth, yes, and she should be as terrorized as the helpless Prince, though she was not. She felt at peace, oddly enough, and confident.

  As she considered this, Prince Manuchar began to turn, face first, end over end. Two black yarrow sticks had appeared to either side his body, floating motionless. He screamed out, "Mercy, Empress of the Russias!" But his spinning grew faster, and as his body lifted upright in the course of one full revolution, a bluish-white light, thin as a clothesline, bridged the two yarrow sticks, and in consequence, Prince Manuchar's severed head shot from his body. The head twirled upward to the ceiling. The crowd in the Great Hall gasped. Freddie watched in disbelief as the shock-faced scream of head drifted back down to hover above the body that continued to spin. Strangely enough, no blood gushed from the open neck.

  Gur’s magic must be clamping it.

  Freddie then felt the inner core of her being heating even more. Just as with the old woman, and within the birthing oven of magical Galician language, deep inside, she heard the somber voice of Temujin Gur: Sing the body whole, Princess von Anhalt.

  So be it! She resolved herself.

  Yes, I will do it then. My hand forced or no, I will save this man.

  She stood to her feet, her eyes never leaving the sight of Prince Manuchar, and her voice rose up with a tone of brilliant silver and steel like that of a dramatic soprano, heightening with volume and vibrato, wave upon wave:

  Vida a ti, Príncipe Manucharrr.

  Eu respiro o aire, terra da sombra da Ahrimannn

  Para cantar a todo o corpo,

  Cantar o novo corpo.

  Sexa o que era, o Príncipe Manucharrrr,

  Sexa un home de vida, non a morte!

  (Life to you, Prince Manuchar. / I breathe the shadow land air of Ahriman / To sing the body whole / Sing the body new. / Be what you were, Prince Manuchar, / Be a man of life, not death!)

  The body of the Prince stopped spinning. The black yarrow sticks snapped back though the air and across the room into the heavy-ringed hands of Temujin Gur. The severed head of the Prince lowered onto his n
eck and joined his body, and the man dropped like a softening balloon to the floor, landing feet first to stand facing Freddie. His dizzy eyes blinked, his jaw moved, though his mouth could not speak.

  "BRAVO!" The Empress shouted from across the room.

  Freddie looked beyond the dazed Prince Manuchar to see Empress Elizabeth in a jovial mood while the rest of the Great Hall sat as though paralyzed in time. Apparently, the display of aria power met with her approval; and as the Empress began to nod at Freddie, it became obvious a test had been passed, one arranged with Temujin Gur at the behest of the Empress herself.

  Freddie glanced over at Gur, but saw nothing of him, only a black heat wavering in the air, distorting the faces of the people beyond it. No one seemed to notice this effect. Was it real? Indeed, in Freddie's mind, the bounds between the real and unreal had dissolved, and as the distortion evaporated she recognized a woman's face, the face of a noblewoman of Russia, seated at the table across the way: muddy blond hair pulled back from her forehead, thin coils of curl, and the face dour and smirking.

  The Vermeer demoness!

  Freddie cried out in rage, rebelling at the fear. Enough was enough! She grabbed a cutting knife the size of her forearm, and as if possessing the strength of several men, she heaved the entire table over with unbelievable force and rushed towards the apparition in a state of fury. But as she brandished the knife within a few feet of the startled Russian, Freddie stopped. The noblewoman was not the evil girl from the painting, not even a remote resemblance.

  Regaining her composure, Freddie tossed the knife to the floor and said coldly, "Pardon me, madam, for the mistaken identity. I thought you were a demon I needed to kill."

  Having said this, she turned and marched out of the Great Hall. In the background she heard the Empress of Russia laughing, another "Bravo!" from her, and the last thing she saw was Princess Johanna's shocked and fearful face.

  For the first time in her life, her mother was afraid of her.

  Freddie smiled to herself.

  Оверман

  5

  The Grand Evolution - Love Beside The Methane Lake – War Tracker

  EMPRESS ELIZABETH OF RUSSIA TREMBLED AS SHE SAT on the edge of her bed in the chamber reserved for her at castle Bärenthoren. The banquet had lasted hours and she felt exhausted, her maidservants anxiously awaiting her word to enter and help her change out of her dress. But word was not forthcoming, not yet.

  Not until certain dark business was concluded.

  The Empress removed a priceless ruby ring from her finger, and reaching into a small leather bag sitting on the bed beside her, withdrew a large brass-and-steel monocle—a complex three-layer contraption sprouting small coils and nail-like protrusions, though no glass. She fitted the ring into the setting of the monocle housing, the enormous ruby in the center facing inward, and snapped it in with a click.

  She lifted the monocle to her right eye, and with difficulty, due to her nerves which caused her hands to shake, she pulled the monocle's thin black-leather straps around her head and snapped them also. She knew she looked ridiculous, sitting there on the bed still wearing her banquet tower wig, and now with this monstrous gleaming thing on her face, but no other choice was possible.

  Communication was mandatory, and actually, now overdue.

  The Empress felt anxious, and a bit fearful, as she always did during such occasions of communion with the God One, and the act of it made her feel like a child awaiting disciplinary action from a stern parent. But in this case, a parent with incomprehensible power.

  Mon Dieu, sauve-moi, she thought to herself.

  She reached up with one hand and flicked a small switch on the side of the monocle. The glowing ruby haze filling her right eye brightened to a screen of red-tinted white, and words in black letters formed before her:

  HOW DID THE PRINCESS VON ANHALT PERFORM AT THE BANQUET?

  "My God One, I watched her closely," she said. "She was not the same person as the one who became terrified at my manifestation as the girl in the Vermeer painting."

  The Empress recalled how hesitant she’d been to join with that faceless black shadow sitting calmly on the seat beside her in the Berlin carriage on the way to Bärenthoren. Temujin Gur assured the Empress of no danger, that his yarrow sticks dominated the "possession demon" as he called it, and that the experience would be fantastical and exhilarating. And he was right. She edged over in the seat and allowed herself to be consumed by the shadow being. Almost immediately, she stared out from the Vermeer painting at Freddie working at her writing desk. Then she felt herself emerge from the surface of it and become dimensional, freely floating and determined to terrify the Princess von Anhalt.

  How exciting that was!

  YOU REPORT TRULY. I HAD EYES AT THE BANQUET WATCHING ON MY BEHALF. ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH HER TRANSFORMATION?

  "If you had eyes at the banquet, then you already..." The Empress checked herself. She knew she must not question. "Yes, I am comfortable. She seems to have the courage and iron in her to conquer the world. But how, my God One, can such a being of power be contained?"

  SHE WILL BE CONTAINED, I HAVE ASSURED YOU OF THIS. YOU WILL HAVE IMMORTALITY AND ENOUGH POWER TO SECURE YOUR THRONE. THE PRINCESS VON ANHALT WILL MARRY YOUR NEPHEW PETER IN MONTHS TO COME AND BE UNDER YOUR INFLUENCE IN MOSCOW.

  "Yes, thank you, God One, but are my powers sufficient?" She swallowed hard. "I do desire power like Temujin Gur and the princess. I cannot hide that desire. I wish dominion—"

  OF COURSE YOU CRAVE MORE POWER. IT IS IN YOUR NATURE, EMPRESS ELIZABETH, BUT SUCH POWER IS ONLY FOR THOSE LIKE TEMUJIN GUR AND THE PRINCESS VON ANHALT, AND TO A LESSER EXTENT, THEIR APPOINTED GODS AND CAPTAINS OF SPELLCRAFT. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THIS MATTER.

  "Yes, yes I understand ..." She trembled more than ever and regretted mentioning it. But she could not help a terrible stab of jealousy that a mere princess should be entitled to such power.

  JEALOUSY WILL AVAIL YOU NOUGHT, EMPRESS ELIZABETH. IT ONLY MAKES FOR SCHEMES YOU WILL NEVER REALIZE, AND WHICH MIGHT WELL JEOPARDIZE YOUR LIFE.

  "Yes, I know, I am sorry, but please, just one last thing."

  YOUR FEAR OF TEMUJIN GUR?

  "I trust him as far as I can, God One, but I know he schemes and he is monstrous."

  YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BECAUSE I HAVE A WATCH ON HIM. ONCE HE COAXES THE PRINCESS VON ANHALT'S POWERS TO FRUITION, HE WILL PERISH FROM THIS EARTH.

  "But once he is gone ... I mean, what will the princess do with her powers besides most likely turn my wretched nephew into a snake? She will be so powerful and power yearns for expression."

  YOU DOUBT ME?

  "No, no, I—"

  HER POWERS WILL SERVE MY AIMS IN THE FUTURE. THAT IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. DO NOT SEEK TO LEARN MORE OR TO USE TEMUJIN GUR IN AN ATTEMPT TO SATISFY YOUR UNNATURAL CURIOSITIES AND STUBBORNNESS.

  "Yes, please forgive me, I ..."

  The screen before her eye darkened. This meant the communication was finished. With her trembling hands she reached back and unsnapped the monocle and let it fall to her lap. She reached out to her bedside table and picked up a goblet of red French wine and drank it all down without a breath.

  She realized she must learn the habit of desiring self-preservation over unbridled ambition.

  * Оверман *

  THE GOD ONE ENDED HIS DIALOGUE WITH EMPRESS ELIZABETH and stood up from his patio chair on the balcony of the Dubai Towers, early one evening in the fall of 2038. And as his personal chronocom—engineered with magi-tech and looking like a small disk of yellow-hued glass—hovered in air only an inch from his eye, he stared out over the city of Dubai.

  Now his city.

  He chuckled to himself. The "God One" indeed!

  Edison B. Godfellow found the moniker amusing, though even more amusing was his ability to terrify that egomaniacal diva, Empress Elizabeth, whenever he wished. Such games were good sport, and his boyish desire to behave like a Zeus or an Old Testament
Jehovah every now and then (a desire undiminished after thousands of years), served him well.

  "Put the fear of God in the bastards!" his friend Winston Churchill always said.

  The Dubai air was chilly, so he slipped on a leather bomber draped over the chair and resumed his overview of the city. At least a decade it had taken to realize this utopian vision: the City of The Overman. His crowning creation, The Dubai Sun Towers, each one like a galaxy of stars, rose for miles into the atmosphere. Three times higher than even the tallest building in New York or Hong Kong—vast mega-plexes above the clouds. His gravity-dampening invention allowed this, as well as The Dubai Sky Isles: floating platforms of suburb strung with lights, their underbellies glowing a soft burnt orange, drifting above and beyond the city over the Persian Gulf. Lines of aero cars connected the Sky Isles and the uppermost levels of the Dubai Sun Towers, and in the distance below, the Palace Crescents, dozens of them like luminescent embryos of spiny crustacean afloat in the dark Gulf, all covered with hundreds of shimmering palaces competing with the vast and silent constellations above.

  Dubai: capital of The Overman, birthing oven of the next phase in the human condition, mother of “The Grand Evolution” nourishing the children of the father and raising them as her own. And as father to The Grand Evolution, as well as ardent admirer of the philosopher Nietzsche, Edison Godfellow could do no less than be an enlightened patriarch. Though he found Nietzsche himself to be a rather puny and irascible fellow given to bouts of migraines and sudden vomiting, he embraced the philosopher’s concept of The Overman.

  Like the philosopher, he was beyond good and evil, and like Nature herself, he realized he must guide humanity to a new utopia, no matter the cost in lives or torment. Earth's two World Wars, and the rise of Communism, had ignited a time stream that created his Dubai. No different than an extinction event that ended the dinosaurs, the 20th century world wars had made possible events leading to the “Grand Extinction” of Homo Sapiens and the coming of The Overman, not to mention his greatest inventions to date: a fleet of magi-tech starships like giant black mantas the size of towns—all under construction beneath city-sized domes several miles outside Dubai. Dubbed by him, "The Sorcery Stars," the ships would rule galactic space, as well as assist in the building of the Dyson Sphere—a utopian creation conceived by the famous physicist Freeman Dyson—that would entirely envelop Earth's sun so that future generations of The Overman, in their trillions, might live with a near endless supply of energy.