The Withered Land, The Empire Falls: ABYSSIUM

ABYSSIUM, Part Eleven

Syngemma Krede stopped her march long enough to rub the muscles at the base of her aching back. Moving her hands to her hips, she rocked gracefully from side-to-side, luxuriating in the moment she took to loosen her thighs and calves and to draw in a long cool breath of morning's air. Her mouth was dry and her eyes felt grit-filled and strained from dashing through the sand saturated night winds, peering into the dark. She and Taran'Gaohnge had literally been on the run for most the night and into the dawn, covering as much distance as they could away from the Nahztreme tank-carrier they'd abandoned along the Uffraza Trail that traversed Tuwerbleek Atun. Away from the attack of the alien airship. Though they both were in superb physical condition, even for the hardy, wandering mercenary class of the Withered Land, the effort had cost them. They were thirsty and they were tired. It felt good to take rest from the sustained exertion.

It made matters a lot more tolerable, too, that the pair were doing so in the vast, cool shadow of the towering Totem At Kyvree'Damuneth, an oasis of fresh water and plentiful, lush plant life.

The oasis was renowned as a territorially-independent sanctuary zone where it was forbidden for warring tribes or armies or even criminal organizations to prey upon one another or enact blood vendettas. It was a Holy Place, sacred ground, and its keepers would not permit violence to be committed there. Once one entered into the geographic boundaries of Kyvree'Damuneth, a visitor or refugee would be exempt from predation or arrest until they'd left the area. As a rare natural environmental oasis, the nomadic tribespeople of Pex'Insava counted upon the area being free of political and military influences, a place where anyone and everyone could take respite -- it was, by necessity due to the desiccation of the lunar prairie, a place vital to human survival in the moon's rough, unforgiving landscape.

At the easternmost perimeter of the area's north point, there sat a huge man-made monument erected atop a five story-high, lozenge-shaped stone kurgan. The kurgan was at the foot of a larger mountainous mesa. The massive cenotaph resembled a broken wagon's wheel partly encaged by a pair of concentric stone rings. At the center where the spokes of the wheel would normally have converged, an ornately carved, stylized representation of a fierce coiled serpent appeared to pull the giant rocky gearwheel together. Thick ropy vines and entwined strands of free-growing ivy draped from crevices in the stone sprocket while grassy patches of lichen nestled in the nooks and crannies of some of the carved bas-relief details. It was a potent and imposing sight large enough, wherever it was not fragmentarily masked by the bulk of the mesa behind it, to be seen for leagues in any direction.

This was the legendary place where the hero Alphus Ceryndall had, in many ages past, buried the mythical "Tome of Blood", hiding it, and thus its potentially deadly secrets, from Dyre-Lord Dreidax Tarathi, Prince of Chaos.

Syngemma, unconcerned about myths and fables, strolled wearily over the pebble-strewn edge of the nearest tributary pool and knelt, cupping the palms of her hands, to gather a mouthful of water... Behind her, she heard Taran'Gaohnge muttering softly to himself. He sounded distracted and slightly melancholy.

"So much happened here, so much hope and yet so many dead miracles, so many unfulfilled dreams and broken dreamers, so many names and faces, so much promise lost..., did you know, did any of you know --- what could and would happen, treaties broken and lost, blood spilled... did you think it would turn out how it did? So sorry, so very, very sorry, puppets, you were all just puppets, pawns of Fate and Destiny, Victims of Terror and War, and all for what? So very sorry...," he said from between clenched teeth, mournfully shaking his head from side to side as he walked towards the water's edge.  

Syngemma had stood up from the shore as he meandered past, checking to verify he was not in any distress, but was instead merely experiencing yet another one of his odd, but strangely routine, semi-fugue dissociative episodes. Taran took three strides past her before he noticed she was not turning back to the water, that she was not moving at all and still facing the view behind him. Taran arrested his own forward momentum and then, too, turned around to face the direction from which he'd just come.