The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Twenty-Seven

The tall, voluminous gray crystal sarcophagus was open and several long, floating tendrils of liquid metallic syrup floated impossibly on the dusky air, slowly writhing and lashing like bad tempered serpents. They made a hushed, slightly wet noise, heated and blistering, that resembled the sounds of meat being seared. And each of those coiled, gyrating strands of aqueous metal appeared possessed of a malignant, independent intelligence.

Though they were eyeless, they watched him as he moved.

At first, he couldn't quite understand what it was he was looking at and perhaps it was because of the angle of perspective through which he viewed the contents of the dimly lit chamber he'd entered or maybe his confusion was due to his general unfamiliarity with life-sciences biotechnology. But it wasn't any of that. He was not a scientifically unsophisticated man. Nor was he was a superstitious man. The fact of it was that he didn't understand what it was that lay before him because it was truly an artifact of alien design and origin.

Alien. The word, and all that the word entailed, resonated through his waking mind and his subconscious, native Teshiwahurian xenophobia immediately set itself at odds against his intellect's sense of reason. Things that were alien were, by very definition of their otherness, wrong. To Teshiwahurians, the term "alien" was synonymous with the concept of wrongness. It was indicative of ill intent. It, whatever it truly was, was an enemy and it should be destroyed.

Kolag Y'phree fought against his growing primal unease and clenched his jaws against the wave of unreasoning panic that birthed within him.

To any person uninitiated to the darker secrets of the Withered Land, the first sight of the creature called "Ka'esh-Wogani'e" was a slap to the face, a refutation of the nature of the Natural Order. Heresy.

"So you have at last brought to me the being to whom you owe your allegiance," the sardonic alien said through a throaty, buzzing hiss. "This is a big moment for us. You are taking quite a risk. And all for me. I feel like I've been accepted as if I were family. I am almost touched."

The Warlord gave Karliandras Dru'ell a hard and disapproving stare.

"What are you?" Y'phree demanded of the anthropoid non-human. He frowned as his eyes roved across the alien mutation's visible surface morphology, taking in the strange texture of its flesh and the glowing, interwoven scarification patterns that decorated it.

"I am what I need to be," the creature answered. "But I suspect your question is more specifically centered around a definition of my evolutionary identity relative to a mammalian primate offshoot like yourself. And, if that is the case, then I must demurr and say that what I am is far too complex a concept to be casually discussed with a life form as limitedly sentient as you. What I am is only of passing interest. WHY I am, how a being such as myself came to be, should be of far greater concern."

Kolag Y'phree snorted derisively, unimpressed with the creature's arrogant response.

"What are you?" he repeated past a sneer.

"The dagger of darkest Destiny," the Ka'esh-Wogani'e said. "The trigger of Judgment."

"He is mad," the Warlord said to Karliandras. His Grand Vizier, her lips compressed into a thin, tight line, stared hotly at Y'phree, her shame and resentment vying with an expression of warning. She knew that the Warlord's games of intimidation and dominance would have no effect on the Ka'esh-Wogani'e.

"Oh my, where are my manners? I feel there is an underlying awkwardness here. This is so tense. Can I possibly help? Are the two of you not getting along?" the creature slyly asked.