Robe

Chapter 19

The Custodian was standing at the top of the wall that he, himself, had summoned. He was far from alone. There were maybe a hundred or so Hepsguard lined up either side of him, large bows at the ready, all staring in silent, fearful awe at what occupied the plains below... and what filled the horizon beyond.

On an ordinary day, the plains of Hep Duatab were exquisitely picturesque, a wide patchwork of multi-hued fields dissected by the thin, meandering Duatol river flowing from the hills encircling the Hep. But not today. By the Highest, today was no normal day, for the plains were filled with figures, the grotesque warriors of the Gol'ur-Klem, numbering in the thousands and stretching all the way back to five siege machines – mobile stone towers each topped by an oversized flame-ballista – being readied at the rear. The Gol'ur-Klem had trampled the fields beneath them, as they had done a time before, and a time before then (and the Custodian knew all too well that this would be their last appearance). And, as impressive as the scale of the horde was, the most incredible sight was what presently blocked the entirety of the valley that was both the entry to the Hep and the outflow of the Duatol.

The Custodian sensed the young witch ascending a ladder nearby. He turned to see her come up through an embrasure, vaulting the parapet with effortless grace, and was once more on guard. This astounding outsider girl showed no fear, and was all confidence. Her aura, the power she radiated by just being, had in no wise diminished even slightly since the Custodian first set eyes on her. If anything, her presence in this land was only becoming more solid.

Maybe this is the type of power the Emissary wields –

The Custodian quickly buried the thought, in case the young outsider was in a mind-reading mood. "Greetings, witch," he said perfunctorily.

Sonic paid him no attention. She was looking past him instead, eyes widening, toward the plain, not to the thousands of brutish warriors that stood to attention less than a mile away, but instead to the tremendous and terrifyingly huge creature that blocked the valley entry of Hep Duatab. Then she spoke words in her strange, ghastly-sounding language, and they were almost a whisper.

"Mierda," Sonic said. She went back to the ladder. Rusty was almost at the top, so she reached down and grabbed him, hauling him onto the parapet with disconcerting ease.

"Have a care, amigo," Sonic said, "and don't you dare faint on me, okay?"

Rusty checked the ground first to steady himself, looked up, caught sight of the Garoc, and immediately turned white. "Holy..." was all he could manage as his knees turned to Jell-O.

"Nope, no holes in that thing as far as I can tell," Sonic said, but it was a half-hearted joke. She still had Rusty by his arm, and she held him there, noting that the boy was about to collapse (again, darn it).

But Rusty didn't collapse. He remained upright and steady, which was impressive, given the circumstances. Sonic looked once more at the Godzillagator at the entrance of the Hep. She was quite used to large-scale things, having regularly encountered ultra-massive warships and occasionally tussled with the fifty-kilometer-high planetary assault-destroyers of the Tyderan Spotter Control. She'd even spent some time checking out the 'Hulk Of Unknown Origin' at NGC 224, which was almost a parsec in length (heck, almost everyone in her group checked out the H.O.U.K.O. once they got their wings).

But this... this thing that encompassed the horizon, a creature whose length extended beyond the hills on either side of the valley (its head and tail were not visible) was of a different nature altogether. Sonic had never encountered a creature like it in all of her sojourns. Absurdly, what she found most captivating was the enormous fur covering the beast, each bristle maybe a dozen yards in length or more, running tightly down its gargantuan side. The behemoth was also breathing, a fact that was abundantly clear by the way its body swelled and subsided with pulsating rhythm, and a subtle change in air pressure with each breath.