by Sean Heslin
“Nothing to him! The world is much better with than without him.”
“Then why did he say you were evil?” growled Rancha, his teeth extending further.
“He said that? As I have mentioned, I suppose it is because technically I am. World domination by dirty means can be a mucky business. Evil only by the standards of people who don’t want to be dominated.”
“Beyond redemption?”
“Absolutely. As soon as I figure out how to remove this curse, chances are I’ll vaporise everybody.”
“You admit this? Now?”
“Why not? You wanted me to be honest so I have no choice.” Yrinmet appeared more irritated and intimidated than guilty. Rancha regained his composure and regarded Yrinmet impassively in the way only he could.
“I have no choice but to believe you then. But one toe out of line…”
“Not a particularly good threat, but yes I get the idea.”
Rancha held a moment longer, then nodded curtly and rejoined the others.
“Where to now Rancha?” said Pib asked, causing Perci to startle and dislodge her.
“A little country home near Lingrit,” replied Rancha distractedly. He fancied that he could still hear the alarms and stamping boots in the distance.
Terand lips moved silently as he tried to remember whereabouts Lingrit was on the world. Then he sat up and said: “That could take a week or two by conventional means. When do we leave?”
“Right now.”
“I don’t think so,” said Milspeth. “Goe isn't going anywhere for a while. He needs a rest. So do I,” she admitted.
“Me too,” admitted Terand. “This ankle is giving me hell. And exactly how d' we get there before Eric does whatever he is doing?”
Rancha frowned at this one until Perci nudged him. “The paper,” he said.
Rancha was blank for a moment then pulled out the photocopied sheets, the last gift of the presumably expired Jones, copied from a tome that was also written in Olde. The group gathered and peered over each others shoulders.
On the pages were sections of a page out of some ancient bestiary, depicting a large winged creature with curiously shaped scales running the length of its back.
“Thee Eithril is ae creature thate is moste oftene yoused in masse transportations, duringe this thee era of the gold. Itte moste oftene feeds upon lonely sheep duringe its long airbourne journeys, it is moste wise…”
“The Eithril, I’ve heard of them,” said Goe with a wheeze. “Died out a few centuries ago due to overwork.”
Pib pointed at the back scales. “These remind me of something. Seats?”
“You might be right,” agreed Terand. “But how does that help us if there is none left?”
Yrinmet sighed and raised his eyes upwards. “Look, you all know where this is going, so why drag it out any further than it has to? Kind Rancha here turns into one, we all hitch a lift, and be in Lingrit in time for tea. Can we go? I've been captured enough for one week.”
There was a chorus of mutterings and they set off to find a relatively open area for the transformation. Rancha absorbed as much information as the papers had to offer; the late Jones had thoughtfully provided a copy of one of his anatomical diagrams, which made the job substantially easier. Unless he had either studied or eaten a thing, Rancha did have trouble exactly replicating some types of creatures and an extinct one would be more than a large challenge.
After much wincing by Terand and Goe, the mob arrived in a field where a type of alternative wheat was being grown. The farmer there started to get quite irate about them trampling his crops, but was flicked a kintstone. This improved his mood and he stuck around to watch the show.
“Stand well back,” warned Rancha. “Also, if you do not appreciate nudity, turn around now.”
Rancha stripped, rippled and was replaced by his loveable and terrifying oversized lizard form.
Then he concentrated.
A rumble began beneath their feet, causing consternation and uneasy glances.
The rumble grew and the ground started to fully shake. A different angry farmer emerged from a vibrating barn and wisely, taking in the scene, ran back indoors again.
The ground started to crack, and yet Rancha showed no sign of change apart from a slight blurring at the edges. The cracks spread to the watching group who hurriedly took several more steps back.
Rancha made grisly, crunching sounds, and started to shake violently himself
A worried Yrinmet sketched in the air the opening gestures for an arcane shield. The others tried to stand behind him. All the force in the world felt as though it were concentrating on this ferociously focused beast, the air alight with Ether and raw stress.
The urglon twisted and contorted beyond the reach of even the best circus act, but still, he did not change.
The very world filled with an angry thrum and the ground around Rancha sunk by several inches.
The whole world seemed to twist and concentrate itself to a point focused upon the rippling creature.
Then suddenly, when the strain made ears bleed, he changed.
Rancha turned a vivid blue and grew, so big, impossibly big, that the sun vanished from sight.
The newly born Eithril looked down at his charges. He seemed confused and tried to take in as much of the new body as he could. The massive head bobbed in approval at the sheer strength contained in every fibre of the new being. He stretched his fresh limbs and gave a roar that made the hidden farmer pee his pants.
To describe the Eithril - begin with a nice base horse shape known to all. This horse was a remarkable sky blue, shading to white towards its belly. The neck extends to giraffe proportions, while the head tends toward a friendly camel face with several visible teeth. Legs are the same shapes, but proportions significantly changed. There are hugely powerful hind legs for leaping and toughened front paws made for landing and gripping on tricky surfaces. The rear feet have well-padded soles with two opposable toes apiece. Tail is extended into a muscular appendage with feathery plates sticking horizontally out along its length. The tip of the tail is a spray of said plates arranged in a similar fashion to a bird's plumage. Running down the centre of the titan's back is a row of curved spiny scales with just the right contours for most humanoid rear ends.
The main feature breaks the horse analogy. Set a little back from the front shoulder blades are the wings. These are not the standard membranous dragon or urglon style, or the oddly shaped feathered limbs that birds have. These wings are a distorted crescent shape and looked to be made out of a glistening silver. Closer inspection revealed that they were made up of millions of upturned crystalline bowls, held together by a velvety organic concoction that allowed air to pass through them on the upswing. On the downswing the wings would billow like sails, catching the air in the tiny bowls, thus propelling the creature, depending on the guiding tail.
He felt, literally, awesome.
The group found they had quite sore necks merely looking upwards, stood so close to Rancha's gigantic magnificence. The camel head swung around and uttered a sound like an elephant playing a digeridoo. Then it looked very confused. It tried again, this time with a little extra bass. Rancha gave up and looked at them pathetically.
“Vocal cords too big,” said Terand knowledgeably. “He can’t speak. Can y'still understand us though?”
The Eithril nodded and grinned a camel grin with an extra glint on the razor teeth. Then it lowered its head to the ground, and with a couple of fairly instructive flicks of the neck, indicated they should climb up his nose to mount.
He had spine space for up to twelve passengers, chitinous half-shells reminiscent of art-deco chairs. Pib climbed up first, dubiously. The creature was so big it could probably squash a mountain giant and still have a paw spare to demolish a block of flats. With her own scant number of inches in height, she was swamped in the furry landscape. She eventually plonked herself in the front seat and shouted back down. “Wow, guys! The view up he
re is great!”
Reassured, the others gingerly clambered up onto Rancha’s back, Perci managing somehow to get a boot up a nostril, which emerged covered in Eithril snot.
Finally, all were seated and Milspeth shouted towards the flapping ears. “Are you sure this is safe? What’s to stop us falling out of our seats halfway?”
The neck craned around, and the equine face looked thoughtful. They felt a tension below them as various muscles shifted. The spines in which they were emplaced curled at the edges like leaves, enclosing their various arms and legs, leaving upper torsos exposed. Pib, being smaller, did not feel as safe as the others but grabbed hold of a tuft of blue hair through the gap and held on for grim death.
Rancha’s head came back round to check they were all safe, and judging by the constricted panic on Perci’s face, they were all secure at the least.
“Now,” he thought to himself. “How does this work again? Ah yes, lift wings and down…”
They rose a metre off the ground, and landed again with a thump.
Hmm.
“Okay, let’s test these legs. Raise front paws, angle body, tense and push…”
The sudden upward acceleration glued the group into their seats, as they literally leapt into the air, steady wingbeats gaining altitude with each mighty flap.
Rancha, normally being a flying creature, was used to handling the rhythms involved in self-enabled flight, but the lengthy, wide tail was something new – in some ways it acted as a third wing, helping both in lift and balance. To the eternal wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night sickness of the passengers, it took at least four death-defying falls before he got the measure of it and set a course in the upper stratosphere.
They flew.
---
The journey in the skies had started in the late afternoon and it had now continuously been daylight for fifteen hours. The crew had long given up hopes of sleeping, due to the wind whistling and the constant light on their faces, with lack of cloud cover.
Conversation was out, as nobody could hear anybody, let alone get enough breath to speak. The only reason nobody had died from asphyxiation so far was that apparently, the unique design of the Eithril provided rudimentary air conditioning, as it had blowholes at the base of each seat similar to that of a dolphin. There was enough air, but comfort was a secondary concern in the design of the Eithril.
There was little to do on the long uncomfortable trip apart from to doze and a sticky episode when they stopped for a toilet break.
In a secluded frontier mountain town that looked like a good spot to vacate bowels and get water, inhabitants would come to worship the blue monster that dropped from the skies as a god, bearing its coterie of strangely-speaking prophets. The visit would send them on a holy quest to conquer the entire region, and in a hundred years or so would become fully integrated with modern society. They would then consider gods to be an outmoded system of belief, suitable only for fools and the desperate, then would be wiped out in a plague sent by a real god who was having a strop, because that god had realised that they were supposed to take over the tribes development the week after Rancha and co. had arrived and interfered, but had been distracted at the time.
The group would never know any of this.
In the distance, the tops of the eternal storm clouds above Lingrit were visible, however, Pib was the only one able to see them being in the pilot's seat. She gave a brief squeal of delight and tugged on the fur reins, to indicate they should go lower.
Rancha, suddenly feeling the back of his neck being ripped apart by a tremendous force, became dizzy and dipped dangerously. He had the vague scent of vomit coming from the blowhole nearest Perci; the acrid mess giving him enough restored clarity to level out until he was skimming closely across the black mountains of the sky.
Pib loved the up-close view so much, she absent-mindedly tugged the tuft again.
The mock-Eithril roared in pain and dipped fully below the cloud-line.
This being a thundercloud-line, he received a dainty electric bolt straight through the nervous system and went into a suicidal plunge straight towards the hard and final ground.
Even Yrinmet screamed.
Improbably, Rancha regained partial consciousness a few hundred feet before certain doom and spread every extremity in the hopes of an airbrake.
This ripped his wings and tail out of their sockets, the crunching transmitting through his body, sharing the sensation of agony with the passengers.
Then he hit.
A rumble of thunder punctuating the end of the fall. All was still.
The spines uncurled and the aching crew tumbled out, bar Goe who seemed quite comfortable and had gone to sleep some time ago, not even waking for the abrupt landing. His legs had uncannily clamped around Rancha’s torso and he stuck out horizontally like a branch.
The crew took stock, checking Rancha. He was not in good shape. One wing had nearly come off altogether and was barely held on by sinewy threads. The tail was bloodied, bent and broken. The neck had a white bone sticking through the fur and his breathing was erratic - wheezing and rattling in his voluminous lungs.
With effort they moved a paw out from under the body, trying to perform a large-scale recovery position. Yrinmet stood by the head and started chanting a healing spell, while Milspeth alternately sang a song of hope and tried to wake up Goe. Terand contributed a bottle of pungent goo, to wave under Rancha’s nose, to restore consciousness. Pib attempted to bind the torn wing, but it was far too large a task, tears streaming freely down her face. Perci felt more than a little useless, shock had fully taken hold. After dithering for a while, he went on what he called a 'reconnaissance' of the local area.
There was not much to see. Dark red sand stretched to the horizon with intermittent scrubby bushes. The purple skies continued to roil overhead, and seemed to be heavier on a point distant, above a black blob on the horizon he could not fully make out. There had also been recent rain and lumps of sticky red mud already coated his boots.
Perci returned and with a grunt sat down, using his pack as a cushion. He watched the life-saving paramedics at work. It did not seem to be going well.
Milspeth, was now hunting for a pulse, but shook her head sadly. Terand’s resuscitation attempts halted through lack of response.
Yrinmet continued to chant but the others gathered around the battered head and gradually took up Milspeth's new song, this time of mourning. Tears came to all their eyes, wishing, begging that Rancha not leave them now. The suddenness of the loss was wrenching.
The song faded into nothing as throats became too choked for words.
They could all clearly hear the beast’s failing heartbeat as the harsh red plains seemed to dissolve around them, leaving naught but the pathetic little scene around the dying Eithril.
Rancha’s breath gave one last gasp and suddenly stopped. Yrinmet ceased chanting and stood back, mouth working but no sound emerging.
The noiseless blue giant lay solemnly while the skies trembled overhead.
The whole world dulled into total silence as Rancha, without ceremony, died.
The group just stared.
Pib started to wail.
Ultimately, Terand spoke. “Do you think we should bury him?”
Perci shook his head. “It would take too long and we have a world to save.”
Terand nodded and continued to stare.
Pib's wailing subsided into a sob.
They did not move. They could not.
Chapter 41
“Life and death are merely variables.”
- Jehani Tofrin, labworker and collector, 2473 C.M.
“Am I dead?” was the first thought.
“Where is this?” was the second.
The order would prove to save him.
“Yes,” the voice answered.
“Why don’t I feel bad about it?”
“Well, it’s all down to glands and chemicals. You no longer have them. Thus, you don’t feel anyt
hing.”
“Oh.”
Something occurred, “What do I look like?”
“Take a look.”
An old-fashioned carved looking-glass appeared.
In it there was a ball of light with tentacles.
But in a nice way.
“Why do I look like this?’
“Because you haven’t decided what you want to look like yet.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Can I go back?”
“Do you want to?”
“No, not really.”
“Ah, that’ll be the glands again. You haven’t got them so you are operating purely on memory. Your life was not a good one?”
“Can't say it was the nicest.”
“I am inclined to disagree.”
“Oh.”
“Sadly, however…”
“What?”
“You are needed.”
“What does that mean?”
“You are dead, but you are being sent back anyway. Well done.”
“But I don’t want to!”
“Tough. It is…”
Chapter 42
“Look out for the darkness, look out for it cannot look back.”
- Translated binary quote of 15614278 of hive 746, celebrated Kigkfroh poet, 4382 C.M.
The traveller sat on a rock and brooded.
The landscape in every direction was as barren and desolate as could be in this painful existence. Amongst the dark red grit that spanned as far as the eye reached, the only vegetation were a few grim weeds and a stunted tree tucked within a crevice. From this vantage point, the warrior could see the Chasm spreading like a scar across the land, far into the distance. At the bottom of the rent, barely a cupful of water managed to eke out from the ever-dry sucking wasteland.
To the right of the viewpoint, was the Dread Fortress, cutting into the distant storm-filled sky like a twisted blade. Surrounding that horrific place was an encampment of misshapen beasts, which were in turn surrounded by a black stone wall. The entire edifice cast a shadow greater than the absence of light - death's last coming.
A hand went down and picked up a handful of the dry brittle earth. Worn fingers rubbed the dead land between them, and a thin trickle of red sand fell back.