The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Part Twelve

Karliandras Dru’ell could not suppress the shiver of dread that ran down her spine as she surveyed her surroundings.  That feeling of dread, of impending doom, overshadowed the extreme guilt she already felt for being where she was, for being involved with what it was she was involved in.  She was an academician, an observer and statistician.  Her view of the world, of Reality itself, was governed by an understanding of Cause and Effect, of Action and Inaction and Counter-action; there was a logic inherent in all things and that understanding was at the heart of every decision she made.  She was not, by nature, at all political.  She did not like feeling duplicitous or traitorous and, unfortunately, that was precisely how recent events had managed to make her feel.  Despite her careful planning and her extrapolations on the multiplicity of possible results derived from those plans, everything was threatening to spin completely out of control.

Bad things were happening.  Yet, just over the horizon, there were even worse things threatening to occur.

How did it all manage to fall apart like this?

She raised her eyes to connect with those of the man across the small clearing from her and she knew... Because of him.  It was all his fault.   And there was nothing she could do about it.

That was how she came to be in this place, this haunted, crumbling  necropolis, a place cursed and reviled by the Church of the Emperium, a sprawling monument to a time long-forgotten...

Karliandras, her over-lush, rotund form wrapped in the thick official cloak of her office against the bitter cold infusing the area, was standing in the deep shadows cast by the colossal ancient cathedral known as Qatedralle Zwarte.

She was here, in the black heart of a place where the outlawed Order of the Fraternity Machus still plotted to return The Withered Land to the soullessness and hegemonic tyranny of the Age of Machines.  She was here, in this fearsome place, with him, the man popularly known as "The Crucifixer"...

Arvenall Dampiko, the enemy of her dearest friend and lord, Kolag Y'phree....

Warlord Arvenall Dampiko was a lantern-jawed bear of a man, exceptionally tall and broad, even for being from the wild bloodlines of the harsh, barbarian rebels from the equatorial climes.  He was thoroughly hairless, without so much as eyebrows on his coppery-brown face, and his startlingly clear blue eyes were cold, sharp and challenging, telling of his mixed parentage as the eldest son of a sea-going Reaver from the icy northern climes and a sharp-featured princess from the searing, humid jungles.  He wore a pair of large golden hoops in each hanging earlobe and a line of shining metal studs had been imbedded down the cheeks on each side of his face.  The edges of his full lips were downturned into a permanent expression of contempt. 

 He was dressed in layers, firstly a loose cloth tunic and pants of burnished bronze color and then an overlay of a vest of dull-gray denim-like material brocaded with strips of deep brown leather.  On each shoulder was a metal epaulet that dramatically protruded beyond the normal outline of his body's shape and that epaulet was designed in the shape of an animal's skull, mouth opened wide to display viciously-curved fangs.  He wore knee-high boots made from the waterproofed, tanned leather hides of a banded lizard-bison.  The knees of the boots were studded with a wide, bas-relief, metal sculpture of the  angry face of a ferocious, long-maned hunting cat, not unlike that of an earthly lion.  Resting on his back was a scabbard that ran from his shoulder to his waist, wide as a strong man's arm, in which a heavy broadsword was held.  A pair of foot-long curved, wicked-looking knives sat on each hip, suspended from a flat black leather belt.  Sitting above the belt, on his right side, was a short-barreled, multi-chambered pistol hanging from a thong looped over the opposite shoulder and around his thick neck.