The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Two

As Drem quickly adjusted the telescopic optical focus of his battle helmet's visor to better see the details of what was happening, Dampiko activated the comm-mic on the collar of his battle armor and snarled into it: "What's happening? Southern perimeter team, situation report! Report now!"

"My Lord's! My Lords!" a voice shrilled through a sudden burst of static across the electronic communications link, "We're under assault from an unidentified source! Something alien is coming. Right in front of the perimeter lines something opened up in the air, like a tunnel through space...! It's coming! It's dissolving everything it touches...!"

Mikaas Drem reached out and suddenly nudged the warlord from across his hover-platform. "Look! There!"

An unforeseen rush of highly accelerated air, a penetratingly cold blast of wind, turbulent and streaming from an unknown source, slammed into them and rocked the aerial platforms on which they stood. As they instinctually squinted, turning their faces away from the onrushing gale, they caught sight of a series of glowing concentric rings telescoping across the battle zone and into the horizon line. The visual phenomenon lasted only a few seconds and then winked out of existence. The zephyr of cyclonic air suddenly ceased, hijacking the gloomy climature and leaving in its place a damp rime of tingling frost.

Four humanoid figures then appeared on the floor of the battle zone, slowly stepping out from a foggy void that undulated like a vertical sail in the air before fading away. One of the ominous strangers was an athletic, tall female, while two of her companions were male, though undoubtedly alien to Teshiwahur, but the last of the group was a towering, armored giant of nightmarish aspect whose humanity was extremely questionable.

Drem had quickly pulled his multi-barreled long-rifle from an over-the-shoulder holster-sheath he wore atop his armored torso and sighted on the newcomers through the targeting scope. The weapon's low-pitched electronic hum warned of a destructive power pulse ready to be unleashed through a single pull of the trigger.

Below the Warlord and his infantry commander, a small cluster of ground troops quickly gathered to protect their commanders, their long-barreled particle beam weapons aimed at the quartet of intruders suddenly materialized from the smoke and vapor over the killzone.

"Who are you? Who dares to invade the territories won by Arvenall Dampiko?" the Warlord demanded.

Stepping forward, eyeing the pair of warriors with an expression of detached inquisitiveness, the female answered. Though she possessed an exotic variety of human beauty, her voice was ugly, pitched in the hermaphroditic range between that of an energetic young woman and the unsteady baritone of an older adolescent male.

"We are The Arbiters."

The Woman was taller than average and possessed an hourglass figure exaggerated by the form-fitting neoprene, leather and carbon-fiber exo-suit she wore. The sectional design of the suit formed overlapping scalloped zones of articulation in line with the natural joints of her own body. She appeared physically healthy and in her early-thirties in age. The exo-suit covered her body from neck to toe, but her exposed face, alluring with finely-wrought elfin features, had blood-red lips and milky, alabaster white skin, except for the gray, crescent-shaped tattoo that covered the entirety of her left jawline. Her finely chiseled features, dark, almond-shaped eyes and full rose-hued lips marked her as beautiful by human standards, yet her odd, ungraceful, jerky physicality betrayed her undoubtedly otherworldly, alien origins. A dark helmet covered most of her head, and its backwards sloping, conical shape fell back over her shoulders to converge into a triangular tip between her shoulder blades, but the helmet was loose enough to allow her lustrous and wavy, cobalt-blue hair to tumble out from under its edges.