The War For The Pallid Throne

Battle on the Plains of Kath'le Kal

The war has started again, and I cannot ignore the screams. I suffer from a great longing and wish to join the beasts on the dunes of Kath'le Kal. Such thoughts are foolish, I know. There is no returning once you cross the event horizon, but I can't help but feel that is where I belong. This battle in particular sings to me. I hear the booming thunder of an artificial tempest as brothers clash beneath the bleeding corpse of a mountain. There is death all around me, so why am I not afraid? I am no gladiator, but my father's sword has never been steadier in my hands. Perhaps there is a warrior in me, after all.  

8

Xerxes spread his wings and leapt down from the Overworld, a rush of wind passing through the hollow tubes in his ear and screeching violently. The hive responded to his movements and sounds, vomiting winged maggots.

The eldriatus, his harpies, glistened wet with mucous, but their wings dried silver, and the stiff hairs upon the antennae hummed from rapid vibrations. Each beating membrane clenched tooth and snapped claw sounded the alarm of a coming plague. Over ten thousand strong, Xerxes army came down from the soft palate, blotting out the pale blue light of the tonsil.

Harpies gathered like a billowing wall of clouds, and flashes of lightning leapt from their beaks, gathering in the coarse hair of thousands of antennae. The sands upon Kath'le Kal shifted as the winds howled and cracks of white energy zipped from one corner to the next.

Engineers were caught on the sands, locked in battle with one another, their armies frayed and beaten, milky white eyes looking up to the heavens. Xerxes could see how weak their control was. The junior engineers spread luminescent thread so thin it frayed at the edges and could be seen straight through. No wonder their creations frothed at the mouth and nipped at their master's heel.

Impudent dogs bucked under the heat, and their tattered leashes broke. There was no controlling them now as they turned on their own kind. The sands were stained with ichor as they cut throats, broke spines, and shattered skulls. One engineer fled from the field as her eldriatus punctured the soft skin beneath her throat.

"Is this the best you can do?!" Xerxes shouted from above.

He hadn't even lifted a finger, and his enemies were abandoning the field. They trembled under that black net of electrical energy. A magnetic pulse. The white static that arced between a thousand antennae was for so much more than show.

That charge in the air, that zing at the tip of his tongue, that snapping between his pronged nose made an engineer's spirit sweat; luminescent threads so slick weaker names couldn't tie knots. He saw their tiny trembling filaments trying to loop through the pores of their souls and back to their creations, but the bindings slipped free, and their hoard went mad.

Screams echoed throughout the valley as chaos unfolded before him. There was little reason to dirty his claws, little reason to stick a pronged fork in the eye of his enemy, but pride demanded action.

Xerxes was the hollow spear, the heir apparent, the lord of the weeping valley, and the one who defeated Icarus in his prime. The broken wings stitched upon his forehead and sprouting from each incarnation were proof of his might.

How could he earn such things from the safety of the back ranks?

Xerxes would be the first to dive, the first to whistle the battle cry and sink his teeth into the flesh of his enemy. Yet, before that, there were formalities to be honored. After all, Xerxes was known by another name.

The storm caller.

Boom!

A blinding flash struck the ground, sending ripples through the valley with limbs and black ichor showering down for miles.