A Rude Awakening

[Shyriath]

The darkness throbs.

A pocket of space with solidity all around; a cell in a honeycomb of stone. No sound but the monthly drip of water, fallen from some unseen stalactite. No living movement beyond the wriggling of bacteria. And, above all, no light. No light at all.

But there is this about the darkness: it throbs, pulsing as if it were blood propelled by some vast, unseen heart. It cannot be seen by the eye, nor heard by the ears, nor even felt on the skin, but only perceived (were anyone present to do so) in the mind and soul, as if one's very self were being gently and gradually squeezed and then released. It is a long, slow, strange rhythm, and for many centuries now it has continued without cease… continued, and strengthened.

But no one is there, nor has been there. The cavern stands cold, empty, and nearly silent, as it has since long before the throbbing began. And, therefore, no one has been present to notice just how strong the throbbing had become just here, how it had seemed to be taking on a nearly physical texture, how the strange energies that powered it had seemed only barely contained by its incorporeal cloak…

…and then, at long last, light.

It brightens and dims in time with the long, slow beat. Hazy, sourceless, it seems to crystallize out of the very air, with each pulse briefly outlining the cavern in midnight blue and deepest violet. And by this eye-watering glow, a few objects can be seen: the blotchy gleam of rusted metal; the rough tatters of wet, decayed fabric; and, whether clad in these or simply lying exposed, bones. Time and gravity have scattered most of them from their skeletons, but some few still remain intact where the people sat in life, in the weary positions of those facing a long, slow death with no energy left to fight it.

Above all, the lychlight illuminates a long box of stone: a sarcophagus, whose details have been long worn away, but was once beautifully carved and decorated. Here and there, it gleams off inlays of gold and precious stones.

With each pulse, the light grows brighter, and begins to concentrate around the sarcophagus. It builds for days, even weeks, until the box is outlined in a corona of violet, and the air begins to hum.

-----

Ever afterward, he would resent the way he had been dragged away from what had come before wakefulness. Exactly what that state had been he could never remember; aside from peace and rest, he would only ever recall the vaguest hints: the glow of soft blue light, the sense of vast, calm spaces.

But he had been torn from it. There had been a feeling of being pulled away, at first slowly but quickly accelerating, until he was being whipped through a tunnel of shadows and unnatural violet light, and at last he was smacked into sudden, terrible consciousness. He had a brief vision of a cavern, a sarcophagus, a body-

He awoke.

His self poured back into its former shell, like liquid metal into a mold. His body jerked and twitched as neurons flicked on in a rippling cascade; an animal cry of shock and pain escaped his throat. The fires of thought suddenly burned in his head. What's happened? Where am I? Why am I awake? All he could see, and that only barely, was a lid of stone a few inches above his face, colored deep violet by the light. Trapped! In some kind of... box?

His muscles were returning slowly to his control. Against the twitching and trembling, he forced his arms to lift. It was hard, and all the more so because they – and the rest of him – were encased in metal. With a snarl of effort, he braced gauntleted hands against the lid, and heaved. The lid shifted, and little by little, shoving again and again, he moved it aside; it fell off the edge, and smashed on the ground.

In the fading light, the armored figure crawled to his feet, stumbled out of the sarcophagus, and in his unsteadiness crashed back to the floor of the cavern, growling his rage. He was angry: angry at his own weakness, angry at being dragged back to consciousness, and especially angry because he didn't know what had happened. There were... vague memories, flickers of things seen and heard and felt-

The battle raging. The feeling of a long dagger punching through his back. The sneering face of the traitor. Another face, strange but compassionate...

-enough to tantalize, but not enough to inform. What had happened? How had he survived? Who was he?

He struggled back to his feet. Had his mind not been on other matters, he might have noticed that there was no panting or gasping of breath. Except to power his voice, he drew no breath at all. Around him, the strange light was fading away into nothing, and received only a glimpse of his empty sarcophagus, some assorted bones, a passage leading away... and then, the darkness swarmed back in, throbbing as gently as it had before.

The armored figure stood in place, looking around wildly, before forcing himself to stillness. It was beginning to dawn on him that rage and panic, however justified, were of no use here. Yes. He remembered thinking that from... from before. He'd never been one to let panic overwhelm him; panic happened to other people, particularly if they managed to offend him. And rage was a weapon to be kept hidden until needed.

He did not smile; that was something else he'd never been one to do, either. But he radiated a sort of grim satisfaction at his train of thought; while half-remembered maxims brought him no closer to understanding his current situation, they might at least sustain him through it. They were pieces of him, a little anchor to whatever had come before, and he could use them to bring more in. Wherever he was, he was going to move forward. He was sure of it.

Moving slowly, feeling his way toward the passage leading out of the cavern, he set out. There was the sound of metal boots crunching on bone as he stepped on one of the chamber's other occupants; he did not pause to investigate it.

Silence returned. The darkness throbbed.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

[Rei Milharna]

*Grabs popcorn.*

[Jacobus Loki]

*Grabs popcorn.*

...and Raisnettes.....

[ari]

* indicates a stifling amount of interest *

[Shyriath]

CLANG. SPLASH.

For a few moments, he lay on his back where he had fallen. The sound he'd made when he'd hit suggested that the floor of this chamber was covered in at least a few inches of water, although the cold, wet feeling on the back of his head was also a definite clue. It was seeping into his armor, too, through a hole somewhere in the back. He pushed himself to his feet again, and gloomily searched for a wall to guide him, boots splashing across the floor. Hopefully he could avoid any more unseen pits.

It had been a decent fall. A man in armor could have survived it, surely, and that was fair enough. To do so without being winded for more than a few moments? That was something else. He had no way of marking the passage of time, but he had been wandering through the pitch-black of the caves long enough to regain some of his mental clarity, and to make use of it. He had discovered that he didn't seem to need to breathe; surely he'd been moving for several days now, yet he hadn't felt any need to eat or sleep either. He'd woken up in a stone box. He could remember being stabbed. He had all the qualifications for being a corpse, except that he hadn't stopped thinking or moving... or, more accurately, he had started thinking and moving again. Only the Gods knew why.

His gauntleted hand touched a wall, and he paused, gripping the rough wall as if for comfort. ...He vaguely recalled that he'd been close to the Gods once, but here and now they seemed terribly distant, even their names escaping his imperfect memory. Were they even there? Had they appointed this fate for him?

He drew a breath, and then released it, laboriously shaping words around it in a voice rough with disuse.

"Are... you... there?" he croaked. "Why... this...? ...What… do you… want… of me…?"

The words echoed faintly through the chamber, but only silence followed. He supposed, whether they had heard or not, he really shouldn't have expected any different. Feeling his way along, he trudged onward.

-----

It was easiest for him, he found, when he managed not to think. Chasing meaning in his head got him nowhere, but when he absorbed himself in simply moving along, searching for new passages, now and again memories would fall back into his head, as if out of the aether. Some few were older, and mere flickers-

-A fine house on a hillside, looking over the great port, the sun rising over the eastern sea. -A tall, frail woman, looking fondly down on him. "Such a serious little man you are, dear," she said. -A table with a map of the world spread across it, the other men and women looking down gravely, pointing at it and discussing. -A messenger from the capital, delivering a summons.

-and they were valuable enough. They were vital to remembering who he was. But most of them were recent... or at least felt recent, in the way that the final events of a previous night felt in the morning. He assumed that they had happened in the days before his death.

The fleet had sailed into the great port on a cloudy day. The buildings still looked the same, after all the years he'd been away, but the feeling of the place had changed. As he'd disembarked, he could sense it without a word being spoken: fear and anger in the air, hostility on the faces of the people who watched them. He'd been born not five miles from this harbor – he could see his old home from here, it was up there on the hill! – but now, in his armor, with the other men, they saw another foreigner, in the midst of foreigners. Never mind that the people here had been Shirerithian subjects for millennia; the men filing off the ships were conquerors, usurpers, and tyrants, the embodiment of Empire, come to keep their wayward county...

He paused in his progress, staring into the past. He remembered being so angry at them. They'd lived safe, provincial little lives in their safe, provincial little county on their safe, provincial little island for ages, and he and others like him had worked hard to make sure they could continue to do so. They'd been given security and prosperity and progress... and none of it had been enough. Give security to the paranoid and they call it tyranny; give prosperity to the greedy and they demand yet more wealth; give progress to the small-minded and they decry the corruption of their traditions and values. Hah.

He wondered, vaguely, what had happened after his death. There had been… a rebellion. Battle. Yes. He'd been fighting them, trying to reach… to reach... something important?

That memory refused to come to him just yet. But he wondered if the rebels had been subdued, or if they had taken the county. Was his home still up there on that hill? Was the hill itself still there? Or had time, however much of it had passed, ground them both down to dust? …Wherever he was now, it wasn't where he had died. That much, at least, he was certain of. There were no caverns of this size in the county. He could be anywhere, or anywhen, up to the end of days.

Or perhaps even the End Times have already happened, he thought, and this is all that's left of the world.

A brief and bitter smile crossed his face. Light-hearted jokes and jests were wasted on him, but he had an appreciation for dark irony. Unlife being the only life left… that, maybe, would be something he could laugh about.

[Krasniy Yastreb]

Fantastico. Seriously.

[Shyriath]

Thank you. Still more to come.

[Shyriath]

He also didn't feel fatigue, at least not as he once had. But it seemed that, after a sufficient period of constant use, it took more effort to make his body respond, as if he were trying to walk through syrup. Sitting still for a time seemed to counteract the feeling; he would have to do it again soon.

The armor didn't help. It was somewhat bulky, and he knew – without quite remembering how he knew – that it was power armor, filled with useful devices, mechanisms, and tools. One of its more useful systems had consisted of a web of sensors and servomotors that had imparted movement of the armor complementary to that of the wearer, so that said wearer could manipulate not merely the armor itself, but heavy loads borne by it, with ease.

This was no longer the case. As powerful as the mechanisms had been in their day, they had fallen silent and still long ago; the power source had likely run down, quite aside from an evident lack of recent maintenance. The armor had been designed to be worn even when unpowered, and he was quite capable of carrying the load only with his muscles, but it made for slower going.

Ah, but when it had been working-

He pounded toward the lip of the gully, surrounded by other men – his men. On the other side, the rebels had constructed a makeshift fort from the omnipresent rocks and boulders, and the muzzles of guns poked through at their approach. He gave a signal and dove to the groundA, the troops doing likewise as gunfire pierced the air above their heads. He flicked a hand in the direction of the fire, and with a tiny phut a small, egglike object was ejected from it, sailing across the gully and-

BOOM. Not powerful enough; the walls were stronger than they looked. But it was enough to stop the gunfire for a few seconds, and the squad used the time to jump into the gully, further down than the rebels could shoot without exposing themselves from below. The shock absorbers in his boots hissed faintly as he landed.

He swore to himself. He hadn't expected the militias to evacuate the lowlands, abandoning their guerrilla war, and fortify up here. They were lacking in equipment and training, but they knew the land well enough. So did he, of course, but that only granted so much advantage if his enemy was already exploiting the terrain for all it was worth.

He called up the commlink built into his armor's collar. "Tactical, this is Reaper One. Fortifications encountered on Selben Ridge; unable to neutralize. No casualties in squad. I need an ETA on air support."

A voice crackled through the link, slightly muffled by static. He frowned as he listened; sound quality was supposed to be better than that. ~Reaper One, this is Tactical. ETA on air support, three-zero minutes. Additional ground support is inbound; the Throat Burners are three clicks west of your position and closing, the Thunderheads approaching from five clicks south.~

"Acknowledged. The Throat Burners are to stick to the gully below the ridge and rendezvous with the Reapers; the Thunderheads are to take cover behind the Teeth of Carthan while deploying for bombardment." He kept his gun aimed upward, but nodded his satisfaction. One way or another, they were going to put this rebellion down.

He had to admit, there was something liberating about the idea of battle. It was a game with complicated strategies, but it fell into that blessed category of puzzles with clear win conditions. You fought your opponent until, one way or another, zie would fight no more. If you failed to do this, you had not done it correctly. It was not necessarily easy, but it was simple and clean, not like diplomacy or politics, where even your very ends had to be weighed, and discussed, and negotiated, and compromised, and even lied about…

This train of thought was derailed by the realization that, off in the distance, the unending darkness was broken by a glow. He found himself shading his eyes as he approached; after the pitch-black of the caverns, it seemed almost like daylight. But as his eyes readjusted to it, he realized that it was not nearly as bright as it first seemed, and was the green color of bioluminescence.

He went around a bend in the passage, and stepped into a new chamber. A quiet trickle of water slid noiselessly down one wall and into a pool that occupied the center of the floor, and all around the pool, sprouting from a thin layer of fuzzy lichen that covered the rocks, were numerous tiny mushrooms, each one glowing green. He knelt down to examine them, the knees of his armor thudding gently into the lichen, and then looked down into the mirror-flat pool. The dim, green light was not ideal for casting a good reflection, but he saw the gleam of two pale-colored eyes – an icy blue, he thought, so far as it was possible to tell.

He switched to a sitting position, and got a look at his armor. It was black, or so dark as to be impossible to tell the difference here, and edged with what might have been red; the ages seemed not to have tarnished it much, and subtle, complicated designs could still be seen on it. There were the tatters of a sort of cloak, as well, which had fared far more poorly than the armor, but which showed similarly rich designs on those portions that remained. It was rather… important-looking burial wear, especially for someone whose sarcophagus had been dumped in a cave.

He reached behind himself, and felt the armor on his lower back, below the ribcage. On the right side there was a widened slit in the metal, as if some blade had simply punched its way through without resistance-

The sneering face of the traitor, disappearing back into the shadows…

-and although his metal-clad fingers could not probe through the puncture, he knew that a similar mark would be beneath it, pushed straight into his flesh.

The feeling of metal in his back, swerving right and left as it cut inward, stinging like cold fire as it sliced in; a serpentine dagger…

This was as good a place as any to stop for a few minutes, he thought. At least there were things to see here. He dragged himself over to a nearby stalagmite, poking through the lichen like a tree of stone, and sat with his back against it. He idly looked at the other rock formations in the chamber; straight layers like sheets, clusters of nodules, like some tiny city. A needle-thin pillar, stretching from floor to ceiling, like-

-a tower.

It rose in the distance as the Reapers crept up through a break in the gully wall; it was so tall that, even though the sun was well below the horizon, its red gleam reflected off the metal surface high above. He'd seen it before, but even for him it was hard not to stare at the thing. He motioned for his men to move forward, and-

PING! A round knocked a chip out of the stone right by his hand. The Reapers ducked down below the lip of the gully, taking turns shooting over the edge at their attackers, but they had similarly hunkered down behind a couple of boulders a hundred meters away. Far behind it, along the ridge, the makeshift fort loomed.

He swore. Thirty damn minutes ETA for air support, and it was an hour beyond that. Where were the bombers?

"Tactical, this is Reaper One! Where's the air support?"

Mostly there was only the crackle of static, but the words ~-tmospheric interferen-~ hissed through clear enough to be made out. He swore again. What kind of 'atmospheric interference' would affect both the commlink and the bombers, and where was it coming from? It was only lucky that the Thunderheads had got their ready signal through before communication had become impossible.

He nodded at one of the other Reapers, who had a bulky mortar attached to the back of his armor. This one saluted, then unshipped the mortar, placed it on the ground, and then, after careful aiming, fired it. Many seconds later, a burst of silver-and-red fireworks exploded above the fort. A minute or so later, from far off in the distance, a similar firework popped in the air, and then there was the distant CRUMP, CRUMP of artillery fire. Explosions began lighting up the walls of the fort, and the wind carried the distant sounds of shouting and collapsing walls to them.

He hissed a set of directions to the mortar signaler, who fired again; this time, the firework was a golden-yellow color, and it burst above the rebels laying suppressive fire on the Reapers. He waited, peering out through a crack in the rock at the rebel position. Surely they didn't want to stick around when they were a possible artillery target… ah. Some of them were breaking and running back toward the fort, evidently believing that the artillery had switched targets. They received a sudden and very nasty surprise when a small troop of soldiers, in heavy red-and-gold power armor, burst into view, taking advantage of the rebels' lack of cover. There were screams and bright pinpoints of light as the Throat Burners' flamethrowers went into action.

The rebels who had stayed behind their barricade hurried to face the sudden threat. He counted to ten, then roared, "Reapers, up and at them! Death take them all!" He jumped up, and his black-armored troops leaped up after him, racing to trap their enemies between themselves and the flames.

Above them, the last light of the day stained the tower red, as if blood were running down the side. From its direction, a faint hum shivered the air.

He blinked. He could vaguely recall seeing some architectural marvels in his life; for many years, he thought, he had lived in a great city, with castles and towers and skyscrapers, canals and city walls, a mighty statue of a tree… but nothing there or anywhere had compared to that tower looming impossibly over the landscape. Nothing that tall could stand, surely; it was like something out of a dream. For the first time since his awakening, it made him doubt the veracity of his returning memories; yet no amount of self-persuasion, or more realistic reimagining, would banish the image from his mind.

A tower of impossible construction, stretching up into the clouds. For some reason he couldn't quite identify, it made him… uneasy.

[Emir of Raspur]

Ah, so this is what decent writing looks like? Good stuff.

[Shyriath]

He wasn't even going in a particular direction anymore. He had left the mushroom-lit cavern behind, and in his mind's eye the darkness around him was overlain with places and events far from here, likely both in time and in space. He found his mind skittering away from the events beneath the tower, as if there was something in him that did not want to see them, and focusing on other things-

He stood on a balcony overlooking the city between the rivers. Activity was winding down with the evening, the humming of street life quietening to the purr of the night, and the lights were coming on as if the very stars had descended to the ground to mingle with the people. He had always enjoyed the experience, but this time it failed to soothe him. Tomorrow would be yet another day arguing with the ambassador, just like this one had been. And the one before. And the one before that…

-only to skitter back, as if he couldn't quite pull himself away-

The air was full of the thunder of gunfire, and the strangely merry tinkling of heavy rain in the form of rounds landing on the rock.

They had made a crude command post in a shallow pit just outside the circle of Imperial forces closing on their foes. And it was a circle; the rebels had been surrounded and were huddled near the base of the tower. That was the part that was worrying him, particularly because, far overhead, the tower hummed in a tone that, though faint, was at such a deep and resonant tone that they could nearly feel it in their teeth. The air felt strange and grainy.

"We should knock it down," the Thunderheads' captain bellowed over the din. "Concentrate artillery fire on the base of the damn thing and topple it like a domino! Who know what they'll do with it if stays up?"

"Who knows what'll happen if we knock it down?" was the shouted reply of the Throat Burners' lieutenant. Their captain, the ruler of the county, was away, bringing in loyalist militias to reinforce the Imperial task force. "Best case scenario, it falls and crushes half the landscape and us with it! Worst case, it explodes like a nuke, or activates prematurely! It could turn all of us to cheese, for all we know! We have to take it intact!"

"The rebels haven't been worn down enough! The other artillery is still moving into position-"

He'd been listening silently to the other two argue up to now, but at last his patience had run out. "Captain, are your Thunderheads in place right now? On this side, closest to the entrance to the Sky Pillar?"

Startled, the captain gave a nod. "Absolutely, but we won't be able to scatter enough of them by ourselves-"

"Not enough to move in on the rebels," he said flatly, "but enough to clear a path to the entrance." He held up a hand. "We can't afford to wait. Destroying the tower outright is too risky, but so is allowing it to remain in their hands. We have to deny them access to its capabilities… whatever they are. Tell your men to get ready to clear us a path. Lieutenant Coryn, I'll need to borrow some of the Throat Burners for heavy backup. Send runners to the other units to let them know what we're about to try."

The lieutenant looked as startled as the captain of the Thunderheads. "Certainly, sir. You're sending in the Reapers?"

He stood up, fixing both of them with his cold, blue gaze, and replied, "I'm leading in the Reapers, lieutenant. Personally."

He tried to force the memories out of his vision. But there was nothing to replace them with; there was just darkness before him, whether his eyes were open or closed. He had to get out of here, lest he be overwhelmed. He had to find the surface, or at least something other than this blasted underworld. And then…

…and then what? What kind of life, or unlife, could he have? What would he do? If there was anyone left out there, how would they react to him?

He still didn't know precisely who he was, or at least who he'd been, but judging by the flashes of returning memory, he'd had high military rank. A commander of men. If there was still a Shireroth, then perhaps he could offer his services again, serve Kaiser and country; it was something he knew he could find meaning in. It was a purpose. Surely a military mind would always be useful.

On the other hand, who knew how warfare had changed since his death? It was possible that nothing he could remember would have any application now. Besides, the sudden appearance of a complete stranger offering to be a general would be enough to get askance looks from any government; for him to be undead as well was not likely to improve matters.

He thought he heard the anxious beating of his heart as he trudged along the passage, and it took him several minutes to remember that this could not possibly be the case. He stopped moving, and listened carefully; there was no mistaking it. There was a slow, deep, rhythmic thump, thump, thump off in the distance, a mechanical sound-

-a mechanical sound filled the vast space beyond the elevator, deep, slow, and rhythmic. The tower was hollow for most of its height; there were mysterious devices suspended from beams crisscrossing the interior, or attached to the walls, but most of it was air. The elevator, built into the wall, had a window that allowed an unparalleled view, and he used the opportunity of the journey to take it in, gazing at the wonders the ancients had built.

He had time. It was not a short journey to the top, and he was alone. He hadn't expected to be.

The artillery had cleared the way for the rush on the tower's entrance, but the rebels elsewhere in the defensive ring around its base had abruptly abandoned their positions to try to close the gap again. The battlefield had erupted into chaos as his little strikeforce was taken under fire on left and right, while the main Imperial force had charged in to take advantage of the rebels' change of position.

He and his mean had nearly been at the doors when an explosive blast had scattered them. He'd been hurled by himself into the elevator, dizzy and ears hurting, and in the time it had taken him to get to his feet, the ancient mechanism had apparently decided he was the only passenger, closed the doors, and began taking him upward. Whoever, or whatever, was at the top, he would have no aid in dealing with them.

He waited, and steeled himself.

As the elevator finally approached the end of its ascent, he tensed himself, holstered his gun, and drew his sword. The doors opened, and his senses were washed out by bright light and a deep hum. They were coming from another open door, opposite a small foyer from the elevator; on each side of the door, a guard stood, but both were peering through the opening at whatever was happening beyond. They were not, for the moment, watching the elevator.

He leapt, sword slashing, and both guards fell to the ground. Pausing only to catch his breath, he strode through the doorway, into the thick of the light and sound-

-and he struggled to concentrate. He clutched his head. "Focus," he muttered. "Focus. This sound is not that sound. You are here, this is now…"

He had to find the sound. He plunged onward, hand still pressed against the wall, but moving faster than he had before.

The sound grew louder as he advanced, and it mingled with a hollow gurgling and the sound of flowing water. Some kind of pump, he thought. Functioning machinery. Civilization. Light. People. He had to find them. He had to move faster. He hurried at a fast walk-

-toward the electric glow, an aura around the ancient machinery. And there he was... Rynnu Pendúra ta Pennúrissa. He knew the man of old; a troublemaker, a vain and idealistic fool. The one who had dared try to turn his island against him. He was fiddling with the controls, trying to activate the tower. He raised his sword, his goal within his grasp-

-he could tell by the change in the texture of the sound. He'd stepped into a larger chamber, and there was water flowing over stone here somewhere. The hollow gurgling sound of liquid in a pipe was louder, too, he was sure of it. He could even see something… there, in the distance, the faint glint-

-of light on metal, off to the side and slightly behind. And before he could turn, it flashed out of sight behind him, and there was a terrible metallic sound of something punching through his armor, and then a bloom of fiery pain as it entered his back, and he fell-

-into the flow as he reached an unseen edge. Water leaked into his armor, dragging him down even as the current pulled him along, and then it started to leak into his mouth as well.

It shouldn't have mattered. He didn't need to breathe, but panic overrode his attempts to remind himself of this. The sensation felt too much like-

-blood, pooling in his lungs as he sat slumped to his knees on the floor. He struggled to rise to his feet, despite the strength draining out of him. It was not much consolation to see Rynnu dying on the floor. The price of associating with traitors was that you never knew who they would betray next.

He was having trouble focusing on the traitor's words; his voice swam in and out of focus. "Think of it... a rebellion, using valuable Imperial troops to crush... a weapon capable of holding vast swathes of Shireroth hostage... Do you know why?..."

He managed to raise his head, focusing his icy-blue gaze-

-through the dark, swirling water, but it was incredibly hard. His armored body was slammed against the thick metal sides of the pipe again and again and the water interfered with his vision, but he thought he saw light again, far up ahead. He reached out his hand-

-and nearly toppled forward with the sudden shifting of weight. He stayed still, trying to gather the last of his strength before it left him.

"To... weaken," he managed. "To sap the strength of Shireroth... to waste our energies. To influence the outcome... of the Last Battle."

"Ages ago, the Hand of Rrakanychan sought to free the great Daemon from his place before the Gate of Balgurd. They failed... but their vision has not. We cannot know what the Last Battle will bring, but we do know that easing the way for the Legions of Balgurd cannot hurt..."

His head slumped, just a bit theatrically. He thought he just might be able to sprint forward, if he had the chance...

Footsteps. The traitor's feet appeared on the floor in front of him. The words faded in and out. "...simply give up... less painful..."

With the last of his strength, he lunged-

-and caught the edge of something, an unevenness in the top of the pipe. He fought against the terrible suction of the flow, which threatened to pull him free and into the mechanisms of the pump that lay just ahead; its steady thumping hammered in his ears. But from the dim light that filtered through from up ahead, he could see that what his fingers were desperately clinging to was the lip of some kind of hatchway. He scrabbled at it with his free hand, trying to find a handle or wheel to release it, to no avail.

He refused to accept it. He refused to fail in this-

-dying or not. He knocked the traitor out of the way, sword hissing through the air with unstoppable force-

-hammering into the underside of the hatch with his fist, the gauntlet crashing into it with the sound of metal on metal-

-and a sudden change in the tower's hum, becoming less steady, more tortured, rising in pitch to a shriek-

-of metal under stress as the hatch began to buckle upward. He slammed at it again and again, and with one last impact the lock was ripped free-

-and the ancient machinery crashed to the floor. The traitor scowled with rage, snorted, and then withdrew into the shadows. He watched him disappear, then, feeling himself slide to the floor, grasped the cloven device for support-

-and hauled himself up through the open hatch, water gushing up around him. The pressure of it pushed him the rest of the way, over the side of the pipe, and carried him down to the ground.

CLANG.

He lay still for a moment.

He opened his eyes. A face hovered over him. It was scaly, with a muzzle, and slit-pupiled eyes. It was an inhuman face... but with a very human expression of dread and sadness.

There was a sensation of being dragged. He was being pulled toward the elevator. "...I'll send you back down, the men will find you. I'll take care of the remaining rebels up here."

He tried to speak, gave a bubbling cough, then tried again. "No... all gone. Device destroyed..." Another cough. He felt blood on his lips. "Won't survive this. My family... see them safely to Benacia. Watch them..."

The Count was protesting. He replied, he commanded, but he wasn't sure what he was saying; even his own voice was too far away to hear. Everything faded slowly away into darkness...

...and was replaced by light.

-----

The light was not bright, but more than enough to see by. The tunnel, deep under Citadel as it was, was roughly made: straight, but not smooth except on the floor, so that no one tripped. It was only there to provide access to the pipes, after all.

Someone approaching – for example, responding to a distress signal from a breached pipe, or the sound of gushing water – would have seen a figure lying sprawled face-up in a growing pool of water. It stayed still for a few minutes, as if stunned, blinked, and then slowly hauled itself to its feet. It appeared to be a man. Except for his head, he was covered in black armor, now badly dented and scratched after weeks in the caverns, but still visibly edged with red and covered in intricate etchings. The sodden shreds of a black cloak hung from his neck.

The man himself was dead. No living human had skin that looked quite like that. But for a corpse, he was in astonishingly good condition; he was tall, and quite gaunt, but one got the impression that he had looked something like that even while alive. He looked like he'd been in the prime of his life when he died, or near enough. A shock of black hair crowned his head, though close inspection might have suggested hints of gray around the temples.

Above all, he had a pair of ice-blue eyes. They lent his gaze an added sharpness and intensity, giving the impression that their target was being pierced with icicles.

He walked slowly up the passage, water draining out of his armor. Every so often, he coughed up water from his lungs – not the involuntary cough of a living creature, but a controlled, almost mechanical motion to expel foreign liquid from the body.

Up ahead, he saw small shapes hurrying down the passage toward him. They slowed to a halt, and stared at him. He stared back.

There was silence as the figure appeared to think. At last, he began to speak.

"If this is Shireroth... I require you to take me to your Duke. Tell zir that a servant of Shireroth has returned. Tell zir that he wishes... to serve again."

[Krasniy Yastreb]

Looks like it's barely begun, but this has all the makings of an instant classic Some of the best Shirerithian writing I've ever seen!

[Mira Raynora Minor]

Expressionless faces- some little more than crude metal masks, incapable of displaying meaningful emotion anyway- peered mutely at this unexpected intrusion into their clockwork world. But the creatures’ surprise, if surprise it was, did not last long: as though promoted by some unheard command, the majority launched around the obstacle and set to work mending the pipe. Only the zombot foreman remained, the mechanical aperture of his lens-like eye constantly refocusing on the stranger as it appeared to ponder his bizarre request.

Another lengthy silence ensued, only ended by the insistent crackle of a spot-welder sparking into life somewhere behind the pair. Yet the silence was misleading, for unbeknownst to the stranger, the foreman was attempting to respond. From the very first moment of contact, the zombot’s transponder had been pulsing out an interrogation signal with the dutiful monotony of a heartbeat, adapting the frequency every few seconds in a futile effort to establish contact. Having tried all available frequencies without success, the foreman changed tack, reaching out along the tendrils of the necromantic web infusing the very land itself. Again, there was nothing…although the foreman did note the seeming lack of a vital signature.

A dead creature was moving in the tunnel, breaking things. It was unconnected, but although clearly capable of speech had made no effort to properly identify itself in accordance with the standard loss-of-communication protocols. The logical conclusion was inescapable: the balance of probabilities pointed to an unauthorised presence in the lower levels. The Stonewardens must be notified.

The mechanical eye was levelled once more upon the stranger’s face. “Unable to comply with request,” a metallic voice stated dispassionately. “Unidentified subject must remain in place and submit to examination by the Stonewardens.”

[OOC Note: Apologies to all, but especially Shyriath for the longer-than expected delay. I'm not going to pretend I can match the quality or quantity of writing hitherto seen here, but I will try to keep the action moving as best I can. Ultimately, my "role" is to help Shy tell his excellent story- not that he really needs help, in my opinion!]

[Shyriath]

Machines.

At least, the man thought, some of them (some parts of some of them) looked like machines, though he could not recall seeing anything quite like these creatures. He had to resist the urge to turn around to watch those who had passed him; it was enough, at the moment, to know that they were not yet attacking him. Instead, he watched the foreman carefully, eyes narrowed. Was this the world now, he thought, populated by devices? Speaking devices, at that?

It did not sit well with him, being ordered around by the creature. However much in charge it was over its own kind, on the face of it it did not seem to be of the same order of being as himself... whatever, at this point, that happened to be. Nonetheless, perhaps these 'Stonewardens', whatever they were, might be worthier conversationalists.

"I will comply," the man responded coldly. He planted his feet firmly on the floor and folded his arms across his chestplate, in the manner of one prepared to maintain his stance for as long as necessary. "It will be expedient to do so. But I do not recognize your right to command me, if that means anything to you. Be told."

[Shyriath]

(OOC: No immediate need to respond, Rossheim... but I was in the mood to prod this along a bit. )

He wasn't sure whether the lack of need to eat or sleep helped his ability to judge the passing of time or hindered it. In any case, it had been a long time. A long time. Years. Decades. Centuries.

He'd been questioned briefly by a creature that was, presumably, one of the Stonewardens; not knowing his own name or identity, he hadn't been able to provide many answers, nor had his inquisitor's brusque manner induced him to try very hard. He'd been told to await further questioning, his armor had been taken from him, he'd been left alone... and then, nothing. No one had come back. Despite the strength of his undead body, he hadn't been able to shift the door, which had clearly been designed for that possibility. So he'd sat and waited.

After a long while, the lights had been turned off.

So here he sat, with nothing but a bench, the tattered black jumpsuit he'd worn under his armor, and darkness.

It was starting to annoy him a bit.

[Lyssansa Rossheim]

The Kingdom of Lichbrook prided itself on a level of efficiency rarely seen in the world of men, but even the most rigorous system is not entirely free from the fickle hand of chance.

The Stonewardens had indeed questioned the strange wanderer, who had been unable to shed much light on his identity, much less how he had come to be found in warren of tunnels beneath Caverden. So in keeping with the protocols governing contact with unidentifiable undead, the stranger had been confined to holding cell while the Deathpriests were alerted. Unfortunately, the message had never arrived.

It was sheer bad luck. The communications network had been hopelessly over-engineered to prevent what had happened from happening, but happen it did. An momentary glitch at the point of sending engendered a fault in the signal, which was misrouted; an error-checking sub-system had chosen the worst possible moment to fail, while the regional communications centre had been temporarily disrupted by the once-in-a-century neural failure of a key official. So the message was not received by Deathpriests, but because of the chain of errors, the system still tagged it as received and bounced back an automated response: hold until further instructions received. Further instructions never came.

After several hours, the Stonewardens had sent a new query. By this time all the various glitches in the network had been resolved, but unfortunately for the stranger, the error-checks misinterpreted it as an accidental repeat of the first signal, which had been correctly received, so far as it knew. The second signal was automatically deleted.

Hours turned to days, days to weeks and weeks to years. The Stonewardens continued about their business, continuing to hold the without regard for the involuntary guest. Again, chance dealt the stranger a cruel hand, for, being somewhat out-of-the-way, that particular facility did not register particularly highly in the awareness of the official scrutineers.

Centuries passed. Several Kaisers came and went; a new necrarch ascended the throne of Lichbrook. But fate had not entirely abandoned the forgotten prisoner...

[Lyssansa Rossheim]

Lichkeep. Wednesday.

Viscount Braynes was not amused, although it was hard to tell, With no body-language to speak of and the modulation of his voicebox set to "diplomatic", the lich-adept's frame of mind was nearly impossible to read.

"And he has been there how long...?" It was phrased as a question, although he already knew the answer; it was all in the report he just received from the Chief Stonewarden.

"Too long," replied the latter, acknowledging the implications of the Royal Secretary's query.

"Too long indeed." Rising up on his stand, the Viscount reached out with the tendrils of his enhanced mind. So much more efficient than physical communication.

After an insignificant delay, he felt the presence of the other lichniks as they hovered respectfully on the margins of his consciousness.

"Send a detachment to retrieve him...bring him here. If the description is anything to go, this is no backtunnel zombot. It is imperative that we have answers without further delay."

[OOC: Sorry for yet another delay. The mysterious stranger will be collected by lichguards and shipped to the capital for an audience with Queen Lyssansa's Private Secretary, Viscount Braynes]

[Shyriath]

So far as he could recall - not that that meant much - the black-haired man had never been enthusiastic about sunlight. He'd preferred cloudy skies and rain, even gloom. But even now, when he seemed to be viewing things more dispassionately, he found that experiencing darkness over… well, however many eons it'd been… had given him a taste for light again.

There was plenty of it now. He, and his guards, had emerged onto a wide, level plaza in front of a spacious fortress, having been driven here from the train station, and in the brief moment before he was directed onward again, he glanced around. There was a city stretching away beyond the edge of the plaza, along the edge of a wide river that looked as if it curled around the fortress. It all looked a little somber, but not exactly unpleasant.

But on the other side of the river…

A far greater city. The domes and spires of temples, the great bulk of hillsides. And, far off in the distance, on the highest hill of all, a familiar shape of walls around a keep. Much of the rest of it had changed, but from that keep he knew all there was to know. It was the city between the rivers. It was Shirekeep.

He still didn't know who he was, but in a way he couldn't quite define, the sight of the city nonetheless made him feel more, well, himself than he'd felt since he'd awakened. It was continuity, something familiar. He'd walked those streets.

The feeling persisted even as he was escorted into the fortress, which unlike Shirekeep, he did not recall. Partly, he thought, it was the presence of his escort. About all he knew of them was that they were lichguards and that they were remarkably short on words; nonetheless, they were the beings most humanoid in size and shape that he'd seen yet, and despite the strangeness of their uniforms, it felt oddly natural-

-striding across the square, flanked on either side by his escort, to address the men-

-and if only he had his armor on, it would have been magnificent, albeit unlikely. He seemed to still be at least a major unknown to whomever was in charge here, if not actually a prisoner, and in their place he couldn't imagine allowing someone like him to stroll around in a suit of heavy steel plates either.

The man's journey through the corridors ended in a chamber, where, still flanked by the lichguards, he found himself standing before a… machine? It looked like a machine, at least. A metal casing, with a multitude of tendrils and limbs extending from it, like some nightmarish mechanical octopus; and what appeared to be some kind of eyes turned in his direction. Whatever he had been brought here to see, this appeared to be it.

Well, assuming it could talk, he'd be damned if it got the first word in.

"If you are the manager of the accommodations I was given," he said drily, "then I feel I must tell you that room service was woefully inadequate. And neither did I receive a wake-up call." The man's voice was creaky with disuse. His accent was odd, as well: quite comprehensible, a testament to the stability of Shirerithian English over the ages, but nonetheless archaic.

Having delivered his shot, he stood to attention, and added more formally, "May I ask who - and, if you will excuse the question, what - I have the honor of addressing?"

[Lyssansa Rossheim]

"Oh, how droll!" replied the mechanical octopus with a metallic chuckle. "Levity aside, I can assure you that the errors responsible for your length detention have already been identified and rectified; providing secure accommodation sufficient to meet the high standards of our more discerning guests is not our concern, but efficiency is."

The creature's eyes refocused on the stranger as he spoke. Most were artificial, their synthetic apertures constantly adjusting, but one was clearly human...a lonely clue to the individual's long-subsumed humanity. "How rude of me...I am the Viscount Braynes, Private Secretary to Her Royal Niftiness Queen Lyssansa, and I am a lich-adept, not that I imagine that means a great deal to one who has to ask. However, the real question we need to be asking is who and what you are; from the report, I understand you either cannot or will not identify yourself and that is an unsatisfactory situation that will have to change if you are to remain here."

A sudden bustle of activity outside disturbed the stillness of the chamber, prompting further waving of the Viscount's tendrils. "Unfortunately and unusually, time is not on our side today...so it would help if you could explain as much about yourself as you are able."

[Shyriath]

A... cyborg? An undead cyborg, by the sound of it. The man was intrigued; it didn't seem to him that cybernetics had been that advanced when he was alive. Yes. He vaguely recalled having to hear how medically dangerous a neural linkage between himself and his power armor would've been.

Aloud, he said: "I am not unwilling to identify myself, Lord Braynes, but unable. I cannot recall my own name, or many other things; I have managed to retain or regain a number of memories, but they have been either very specific or very general.

"I can remember that I was born and raised on an island subject to Shireroth. From the size and style of the house I lived in, I appear to have been from a privileged background. I lived with my mother; I cannot recall my father, and I believe that he was dead by the time I was a few years old. By the time I was a young man, I had moved to Shirekeep - on the way here, I recognized the shape of the Keep, yonder, across the river. If it speaks anything about the time I was alive, it seems to me that what was on this side at the time was very different. There was not such a large fortress here, certainly.

"At some point I became a military commander. I can recall being sent to different regions of the country... I think there had been periods of unrest at the time, rebellions in the various Duchies, and I had been sent to subdue them." His voice took on a faint edge. "I recall having very strong feelings about treason. At some point I was brought before the Golden Mango Throne for my efforts. At some point I married and had a son, but because of my duties I was long away from them, and I do not think I was close to them.

"Most of my memories involve the military action in which I died. The island I had been born on was itself experiencing a rebellion, and I led part of the force intended to quell it. Although it was not an important land in itself, it had... it had an ancient artifact on it. A tower, of extraordinary height, filled with machinery. The rebels had learned, had been advised, how to operate it, and intended to use it on Shireroth at large to secure their independence. Our force arrived before they had powered it up fully, and vacated most portions of the island, but dug in around the base of the tower. Our air power was rendered useless by the tower's emanations, so we had to rely on a ground assault. I led a small force through to pierce the cordon, and we did... but I was separated from my unit, I ascended into the tower alone..."

The man's fists were clenching. His voice took on more emotion as he spoke. "The rebel leader was there, at the top, the vain coward that he was. I prepared to cut him down with my sword, but I was stabbed from behind by his associate - an aide of the Count. I do not know what powers had forged that dagger, but it punched through the back of my armor like paper. And then he, he killed the rebel... he was an agent of Balgurd, a worshipper of Daemons. He sought to weaken Shireroth before the days of the Last Battle. But with my last strength, I managed to knock him aside, destroy the mechanism that activated the tower. He escaped. The Count found me... I do not know what he was, not human, but always loyal. He tried to save me, but I was too far gone. I charged him with seeing to the safety of my family, but I was unable to warm him of his aide's treachery before I died. And then I..."

He trailed off. After a pause, he murmured, "There was... light. Light and space, and peace. I had never known such peace before. That's all I can recall of it. But there came a time when I was whipped back, as if through a dark tunnel, and suddenly I awoke like this, in my armor. I was in a... a sarcophagus, which I broke free of. There was a sort of... throbbing in the air, and a fading purple light, which showed a small cavern. There were bones littering the floor. And then there came darkness, and I felt I had to move, and find a way out... which I did, when I encountered the pipe at which your... people found me."

There was another pause. The man finally added, quietly, "I fought and died for Shireroth. I know from the sight of the Keep that this was in Shireroth. But you speak of a Queen. Is there no Kaiser? Is Shireroth a thing of the past?"