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

HELL'S AVATAR -- PART TWENTY-SEVEN

D'Spayr was on his own, alone inside the Duskhelm Priory.

The Territorial Expanse SpecOps troopers had gone their own way after an attacking wave of over a dozen snarling Xsieh'Potheth had nearly overrun the damaged dune-crawler. They'd fought their way past the savage hoard with much more difficulty than they had expected. The Wenkrang had turned out to be a lot more durable than they'd expected, each wildling warrior able to withstand multiple strikes from the trio's particle and plasma beam-weaponry before succumbing to their wounds.

The appearance of the mountainous spherical alien ship had helped distract the swarming pack of bloodthirsty Wenkrang long enough for the armored trio to escape the vehicle and split up, venturing deeper into the necropolis along different paths.

D'Spayr had followed a trail down a half-enclosed passageway that had wound past a large statue of a pantherish feline battling an eagle-like avian raptor. He encountered very little resistance to his presence as he ran. It was obvious the soldiers of the Ashen Brood were single-mindedly occupied with the defense of the Priory from the brutal assault of the Wenkrang. The few Brood militiamen who did notice the Knight, instinctively avoided engaging him in direct conflict. They weren't in any hurry to split off from the relative safety of their troop-brethren to enter into battle with an unknown armored interloper as a monstrous giant alien rampaged within their ground's perimeter. D'Spayr kept running. The path had ended at a hexagonal concourse under a shattered stained glass rotunda. From that open lobby, a trio of passages tunneled on a downward slope deeper under the surface of the necropolis.

He executed a running leap over a jagged crevice opening in the subterranean floor, where a large bundle of electrical wiring had come free from its ceiling moorings and pored a hissing and spitting pool of white-hot sparks across the rocky floor and down into the chasm, and lunged around a darkened corner into a huge open chamber.

D'Spayr slowed to a stop, awed and bewildered at the advanced panorama of advanced machinery that cluttered the chamber.

The young Knight also saw a giant man wrapped in flexible, fabricated metal bands, an over-large human figure almost mummified with the encroachment of advanced age and the dust of years, crucified upon an X-shaped cross of metal girders.

And he saw a hooded man in robes whirl about and repeatedly fire some deadly variety of weapon at the mummified, cyclopean figure.

Black lightning, shiny and solid as a writhing whip made from crude oil, lashed out in an explosion from the wounded titan's convulsing form.

A bolt of blazing flame-colored brilliance streaked down from the chamber's ceiling bulkhead and struck the robed man, momentarily paralyzing him. The strike generated enough impact to lift him from off his feet and propel him against a floor-mounted, multi-shelved server rack with hurricane force. Several of the computer servers emitted a high-pitched grinding squeal from the abrupt collision and the rack's girders pealed like a bell.

The robed man fell, his clothing smoking and smoldering. He did not move again.

That was when D'Spayr noted the startling presence of a being he did not imagine he would ever again encounter in his life. His breath caught involuntarily in his suddenly constricted throat. His hands clenched and unclenched as an instinctual primal fury began to rise. Standing across the chamber, partially obscured by dim light and the bulky casing of a looming bank of interconnected computer cases, next to a translucent pylon containing a collection of metallic rods, was a being he could never forget. Floating, otherworldly grace and eerie ghostliness. The sculpted face of a soulless doll. The empty eyes of a predatory sadist.