Lost and alone, disheartened by failure and wanting only to go home, Thomas Gown and his companions face the darkest hour of their lives when they stumble across a remnant of the once mighty Agglemonian Empire. There they make a stunning discovery t...
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If any of the doomed defenders of Fort Battleaxe had been able to spare the time to look up into the sky, they might have seen, in between the clouds of smoke rising from the burning city, a tiny point of golden light. It was the planet Sereena, the next planet out from the yellow sun. So close, at this point in the elliptical orbits of the two planets, that it was clearly visible in the daytime. The shae folk claimed to be able to see, with their unaided eyes, the golden rings that encircled it, but humans could only see them without a telescope when they came their very closest together, every twenty three years, and even then only the sharpest eyed could make them out.
The planet currently had two occupants, and one of them was standing on one of the parapets of his newly built fortress, protected from the hurricanes that regularly blasted this hell planet by a barrier of magical energy that admitted only a light breeze to ruffle the folds of his robes. Although the air was almost pure carbon dioxide and far below the freezing point of water, this didn't bother him in the slightest because he was an ark rak, an undead creature who no longer had any need for either oxygen or warmth. Indeed, he liked the cold, and the nightmarishly harsh conditions brought a new glow to the burning pinpoints of light that occupied the sockets of his shrunken, mummified head and served him as eyes.
Malefactos had chosen this world as his temporary base of operations precisely because of its inhospitability, thinking he'd be safe here, that he'd be left in peace to continue his preparations for his eventual move to a permanent new home, much further away from Tharia. The troubles of his former homeworld had ensnared him again, though, and he had one final task to perform before he could turn his back on it forever. The rak had no doubts about his ability to carry out the task. It was a trifling thing, easily within his capabilities, but it was likely to take some considerable time to complete and he still had many problems to solve before he could set up home in another plane of existence, or a far distant part of this one. Not that time meant anything to him any more, he reminded himself. He was eternal now. He had centuries ahead of him. This impatience was a relic of his human origins, and so he forced himself to relax and face this minor digression with the equanimity that his new status deserved.
For a moment he remembered the violent emotions he'd liked to indulge in back in his youth. His passions, his jealousies and frustrations, his rages. His rages above all. The violence with which he would destroy those who stood against him, the overkill he would bring to bear against any obstacle he found in his way. He had enjoyed those rages. Nothing had made him feel more alive than crushing some annoyingly incompetent underling with overwhelming force. Now and again since his transformation he'd tried to kindle a fury at something in an attempt to recapture that youthful fire and energy, but every emotion seemed to die quickly these days. Even the theft of his ark had caused him only a momentary anger that had soon faded, although his desire for revenge remained, and he knew that this process would continue over the next few months and years as the last shreds of his humanity slipped away. It worried him a little, but if that was the price he had to pay to escape death then it was a price worth paying. Any kind of life was better than the damnation that awaited him in the afterlife, and if he eventually came to lose everything that had made him human, his emotions, his passions, his loves, that was alright so long as he retained his liberty and his power. His power above all.
