'If you can assure me of total success, then you may begin the festivities', said Tudor ap Rimetar, the erstwhile Overnumismator Eminent of the Assayers and latterly the self-declared Prince of Wintersong and Duke of Goldshire, to his Magus, the geomancer and wearer of the crow-feathered cloak Grigory Mazower. With this simple phrase, Grigory was put in charge of a delicate operation: the destruction of the main radar unit controlling the approach of the air corridor to the Novaya Sorensk SDI facility. For this task, Grigory had his seven acolytes, versed in the forbidden arts of Mors, and four 'triskele'; elevated ironclad fighting platforms borne aloft upon a tripod frame of three living tendrils sculpted from the congealed sacrificial blood of entire villages and the dank, moist primordial clay dug from deep beneath the Lacus Conticinium; edifices blessed by the High-Priest of Lokenhasp himself. Identified and photographed by partisans of the C'ort Mediguttula, the radar installation was a pair of mobile engagement and acquisition radars landed on the self-same island by the MoMA even before the intervention of Imperial Forces had been officially sanctioned. Around these two units, located at either end of the island, fortified encampments garrisoned by waifs and strays from the Shirerithian Supplies Service had sprung up. The radars themselves were operated by the Technomaezji and gave the Imperial Forces a full picture of all aerial activity over lower Lunaris, the Elwynn delta islands and all the way across to Musica. While those radars still functioned, the Technomaezji could target any unidentified contact with an ABM Ikol missile launched from Novaya Sorensk. Taking these out would call for a precisely timed, co-ordinated attack so that both stations would go blind without sufficient time to send a warning to the SDI facility or to acquire a targeting solution.
The Triskelions had slipped quietly into the waters of Torpentus Creek on the dark moonless night of 1 Gevrader 1640, passing the beached and broken hull of the corvette 'Emsabh' to their right as they swam parallel to the shore known as the 'Rice Coast' of Podaestuar towards the cape in the Ward of Aina that was the southernmost point of mainland Goldshire. After three hours the four triskelions, the ironclad fighting platforms bobbing on the waves like small low-board warships, rounded the cape and approached the Guttuli islands. Paired with Prish, his defensive ward-caster and concubine, Grigory reached out to the corrupted soul of his Triskelion and 'nudged' it to take the nearest channel between Origuttula and the mainland of Aina. At his unspoken command the vast golem flicked its submerged tendrils, reorientating the bow of the fighting platform to align with its new heading, before powering ahead. The Triskelion of Elyssia followed silently in Grigory's wake and together the two triskele pressed through the reed-clogged tangle of islands and channels on until they reached the northern promontory of Mediguttula and then lurked in darkness beneath the shadow cast by the cliffs of nearby Occiguttula. The triskele of Yragore and Belix had taken up station at the southern end of the island, and now they waited for the first rays to be cast by the dawn rising of Atos.
Mediguttula was a cursed island; its soil tainted by decades, if not centuries, of chemical, biological and radioactive waste thoughtlessly dumped by the various iterations of the Imperial Republic's Strategic Defence Initiative. On top of that it had been used by successive Counts of Lunaris as a dumping ground for the most suspect elements of its own population, the socially degenerate and those whose bloodlines had been tainted by scandal and misadventure.
With the light of Atos once more revealing the existence of this wretched wasteland to a nauseated world, the tripods at last rose out of the water. At a distance of 6 versts from his target, Grigory reached out into the abyss – projecting the grasping tendrils of his spirit to sense out the auras of the garrison; complacent, bored, hungover and tired, they were easy prey now falling into his clutches. In his mind's eye, Grigory could now see the Imperial soldiers through their feeble flickering spiritual energies in much the same way as a bat can see its prey in the depths of the night through echo location. By their postures, the way they sat, the way they stood or talked or laid, he could begin to discern their place and purpose. Who was in the canteen as opposed to who was squatting in the latrine, who was on guard duty and who was still in bed, who was still asleep and who was staring listlessly at the ceiling of the converted container that served as his hut. Such uninteresting fodder, he passed them by with a glance, until he found the ones for whom he was searching; their auras spoke of strength, discipline and purpose, also of some light spiritual training – these were the Technomaezji, sat closely together yet facing outwards, they were at their stations, carefully watching their respective monitors for the merest blip. Grigory could sense the frisson of alarm and excitement that shimmered through them as one noticed a contact looming on his screen. That contact was, of course, Grigory himself, and it was far too late for them to do anything about him.
At a distance of three versts, Grigory gathered in upon himself the telluric energies pulsated within the Triskelion upon which he stood. The tripod served as a magnet for the telluric currents that criss-crossed Micras and within a set radius possessed and attracted the dormant energies of the proximate lay lines as though charging a battery. Now drawing from that charge, Grigory visualised his target, a man of thirty-two years of age, copper skin, a small wiry black moustache, a Babkhi, a man of petty resentments, a man with a name, a name that Grigory now knew, a known man who would now serve as the conduit for the energies that Grigory would now unleash; a dead man who did not yet know it.
A fiery storm of energy wrapped around and enveloped hapless 2nd Lieutenant Khalid al-Rostami as he sat huddled over a screen in a cramped trailer module. By the time that he realised that it was he and not the monitor that was glowing it was already too late. Dancing spirals of electrical lightning and blue flames tore through radar dishes, radio masts and electronic installations. Their operators, if not instantly incinerated, were buried beneath the tangle of debris. The time was 05.38 in the morning of the 2nd of Gevrader 1640 and at the same moment the installation on the southern tip of the island was being similarly eviscerated.
Sat cross-legged atop the ironclad platform, his face a picture of serenity, with the crow-feathered cloak draped over his shoulders, Grigory Mazower found the time, amidst all the generalised carnage and wholesale destruction, to savour the pleasure of the little moments such as those.Another loud crack followed the crashing and screaming nearby. From the ruins of a command bunker a woman stumbled out into the morning light, shrieking as she burned, before crumpling down onto her knees as her skin blackened and shrivelled whilst the flesh bubbled like pork crackling as a boiling and hissing mix of blood and fat spilt a scolding puddle of vileness around where she died. Transfixed by the sight and still caught in that state of befuddlement that comes between sleep and consciousness, the soldier's mind struggled to filter through the confusion. It was all noise, fire and blood. In the twilight of the near tropical morning, the only light he could see clearly was that cast by the flames of burning vehicles, burning tents and burning men. He hugged the wet ground, his fingers scraping and scrabbling amidst the mud and filth in a desperate search for his trousers, for his boots, and for his gun. He had been pitched out of his tent suddenly by a panicked stampede into a sudden conflagration of fire and death. Why was everyone shooting? The soldier could hear the sound of battle clearly. The noise and the dying. 'Not me, oh merciful Vivantia not me...' His mouth opened in a silent scream. Paralysed by fear, he couldn't move. He said his prayer to the goddess of life over and over again. A cold sweat rand down his face his chest heaved, he gulped for air. Panic held him in its iron grip together with a dread certainty, a foreknowledge of unavoidable death. Still he dared to hope that perhaps this was some feverish nightmare, but no, the flashes of fire that whipped around the encampment, and danced upon the shattered masts and dishes of the radar array, the heavy rolling thunder of anti-aircraft fire, the screams of the wounded and the moans of the dying. It was all too real, and then, from amidst the mingling of thick smoke and morning mist loomed a vast wet tendril the thickness of a tree-trunk, seemingly of a consistency of unglazed clay streaked with vivid splashes of red. Stupefied with awe and horror, the soldier looked skywards, towards where the tendril converged with three others beneath an armoured box. It was the most bizarre and awful thing that man had ever seen. Like a jelly-fish, an Atteran Man-O-War walking upon the land. It was also the last thing he saw; he didn't even have the time to finish a scream before one of the other tendrils raised up at a perpendicular angle before coming back down with unstoppable momentum and crushing him like an ant under a boot. A smear of gore and a deep indentation in the earth was all that remained.
[Mediguttula] Dawn of the Triskelion
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