The Withered Land, THE EMPIRE FALLS: HELL'S AVATAR

HELL'S AVATAR -- PART TWENTY-TWO

7. THE VENGIFIERS

On every civilized world throughout the Known Cosmos, regardless whether the dominant species is humanoid or insectoid or reptilian, there comes an important and defining moment during the passage of millennia during which everything that existed before, and that "everything" is inclusive of sociopolitical or geo-economic or technological elements, violently and forever changes. That moment is, by definition, both dramatic and traumatic. There will be upheaval, unrest and rebellion, terrifying conflict on a major scale, and likeliest of all, death. The Old Order is uprooted, abandoned, or destroyed, and that Order is supplanted by something unexpected, a different Order, though it need not necessarily be defined as "new". Calm, methodical, sequential, systemic organization dissolves and devolves into furious, unbalanced, unruly disarray and Chaos. And, ultimately, a fresher State of Order arises from the wreckage.

It does not, as is frequently postulated by those so-called "great thinkers" and philosopher-apologists who seek to easily summarize a large and complex process into a manageable sound bite, happen in an instant. That is a lie.

That moment, when at last it comes, resonates throughout a long and painful eternity, leaving in its wake a brutal trail of raw and agonizing scars across Time Itself.

On the planet Teshiwahur, a place often called The Withered Land, that defining moment arrived one otherwise unremarkable night at the dead city Shi'draih-Hakaba...

It arrived on wings of slaughter.

Forynnuhr and Harqwenne stealthily arrived at a subterranean gallery, an airy, hexagonal chamber built into a natural cavity a dozen meters below the interconnected network of tunnels beneath the Great Hall of the Duskhelm Priory. The roof of the cave was supported by a series of formal arches decorated with stylized imagery representing assorted Holy Warriors from the storied history of the Ashen Brood. The rough floor of the gallery was inlaid with an expansive painted tile fresco, its ornate forms and line-work faded with age and wear.

In the center of the room was a four-tiered, vertical stand, slightly taller than a tall man, made from galvanized metal, dotted with shiny button rivets and a collection of small lighted, square panels. A trio of aerial ovals, shiny metallic teardrops the circumference and length of a man's forearm, flew around the pointed apex of the stand in contradicting orbital patterns, each oval flying through the air on its own individual elliptical plane, like electrons around an atomic nucleus. The assembly was utterly noiseless, its silence making its high-tech presence even more eerie given its rough-hewn monolithic surroundings.

"What is this?" Harqwenne asked, wary of the strange object.

"The external interface to the Regulator rod for the Core of the planetary Data Reactor of the computerized Autonomous Administrative Command Node," Forynnuhr answered. "The instrument to which I have been dispatched to initiate reactivity."

Harqwenne blinked rapidly, trying to decipher the strange sounding words. "You mean, this is some kind of control implement that you can use to communicate with the old, dormant planetary computer network's central brain?"

Forynnuhr sighed. The Scribe's overall lack of technical expertise was beginning to wear thin on the Pilgrim's already challenged patience.

"Well, mostly yes, if we really have to simplify it, that is what I mean," he said.