Dark Cloud
Nallore
Torack
Nekhara stared down at him with her huge, sunken eyes reflecting the verdant glow emanating from the rot-smeared stone in her breast.
…Powerless!?
Powerless!?
Shyss Canak dares to call ME powerless!?
Illuminated by the unsteady green light, tendons bulged beneath her paper-thin skin as her jaw clenched, letting Shyss know that his quip had cut right to the bone.
…of all the wretched faces to see upon rising from the grave…
But, to retaliate in her weakened state would be utterly foolish, so Nekhara let Canak have his little victory in her sullen silence. Instead, her eyes moved languidly to look past Canak.
Her partially-rehydrated eyes felt sticky in their sockets. What little fluid had formed made for gritty movements that she could feel against the insides of her eyelids. Artificial lenses were barely suspended in the overly-viscous humors and struggled to cycle. The thick fluid made a haze that required additional compensation to focus properly until finally, Nekhara could discern the parasitic puppeteer for which she was searching.
Fused with the butler’s spinal column was… something else. Egregious differences in tissue structures showed Nekhara how the foreign tendrils spread into each limb in a cruel mockery of the host’s nervous system.
…Shyr Polaes, the Blood-Drinker…
An eon had passed since she’d first witnessed the things wriggling and writhing over smoldering ground. So small, so insignificant, they had seemed then, but how insidious they’d quickly proved.
The Masari had studied the stars long before they’d gone to join them, and called everything they found amongst them by a single word old as the first world they’d left behind:
…vatyr…
Outsider.
Alien.
Wrenched from her studious reverie, Nekhara’s brow lifted in surprise as she witnessed the innumerable unnatural sinews suddenly multiply and expand throughout the once-mortal limbs. With a single great leap, the monster within compelled the man’s form through the crudely-made ingress point above.
…my skin is not my own, but at least I can be certain my mind is…
With another blink of her large eyes, Nekhara took a moment to calculate the distance for herself. A splattering of formulae displayed the computations, along with a single rune flashing a warning in red.
She couldn’t make the same jump.
Not in a single leap, not as she was, not with what little fuel the malnourished mortals had provided to her shriveled organs and depleted components. Her eyes closed briefly to mourn her last shreds of dignity.
…I’d rather climb back into that fucking box than ask for a helping hand from Canak…
Which left her with a single, slightly less abhorrent option.
The geometric patterns just beneath her skin pulsed with a dim light as her half-machine heart struggled to pump the requisite materials through dormant constructs within her limbs.
She started across the chamber and her long strides quickened to a loping sprint, a laborious lead-up to a much less impressive leap that placed her a few meters below the tunnel’s end. She met with the seamless paneling exactly where the computations had marked. The clank of metal snapping to meet metal was immediately followed by a pained yelp escaping Nekhara. The impact’s force had split her fragile skin wherever her magnetized bones met the metal wall.
Smears of her thick blood left a sticky trail of odd tracks on the paneling as she climbed, moving with the humiliating posture of some horrifically elongated skink scurrying along a garden wall. Clumps of the decayed fabric sloughed free from her dangling garments, landing with wet smacks on the floor below as she scuttled along.
Finally, she pulled herself over the lip of the tunnel’s entrance and tried to stand. The claustrophobic tunnel was barely tall enough for the wiry men that had carved it from the bedrock, one swing of their bloody-handled tools at a time. Nekhara was nearly twice that height, forcing her to remain bent like some aged crone. The crystalline implant in her sternum was the only light within the cramped tunnel. Swirling shadows swam along the stone walls and eerie shades reflected from the artificial components in Nekhara’s eyes, while the two abominations stared at each other while the slow, silent seconds stretched tediously thin.
“Well?” The ghoulish Elf snapped with thoroughly indignant impatience.
With a wordless huff, Canak’s valet turned succinctly on his boot heels and proceeded upwards along the gently-sloped passage.
Nekhara noticed that Shyss was still lingering in the chamber below, but she hadn’t time to ponder why before the rough-hewn ceiling fileted a swath of her scalp open. The exposed portion of her alloy-augmented skull sparked against another jagged projection. She flinched and stumbled with an irritated hiss.
The butler wheeled around at the sound as Nekhara returned the strip of flesh to its place. Threadlike filaments reached out to meet the precipice of desiccated dermis. The dark fluid seeping from the wound dripped down the side of her face slowly as sap. The valet’s face folded into a hideously inhuman snarl, and Nekhara took some small comfort in knowing that there wasn’t enough blood in her circulatory fluid to prove appetizing to the Shyr Polaes.
Avoiding the ceiling, and another visceral inconvenience, forced Nekhara to all but crawl the remaining distance behind her appointed escort. The climb seemed endless under the weight of her humiliation, though the runes at the edge of her view tracked just under a kilometer before she could see the lamplight ahead.
Finally emerging from the tunnel, Nekhara could once again stand upright. She inhaled deeply as she straightened, attempting to savor her first chance to truly stretch since she’d gone to ground so long ago. The accompanying inhale, her first full breath of the chamber’s air, caused her to reflexively retch, and deactivate her olfactory processors. She’d been entombed with her own rotting flesh and still the overwhelming warren-stench of unwashed bodies was as recognizable to Nekhara as it was, regretfully, memorable.
…humans…
She could see their sun-starved, grime-smeared faces peering at her between the guards that had apparently gathered in response to the echoing screams of dying men. Each of their gleaming breastplates showed Canak’s ancient crest molded into the metal. Their weapons were readied, but they hesitated at the sight of Canak’s own valet. The butler stood alone between Nekhara and the cluster of guards. Stoic as ever, he calmly raised a stiff hand and the guards lowered their varied weaponry. The brief clanking of moving armor was immediately followed by an exchange of growls and hisses. Nekhara presumed it to be an informal conversation of sorts, though she could only liken the Shyr Polaes language to eager predators calling out to each other through the night. With a definitive final bark from the valet, the guards turned to clear a path for their master’s servant and his charge through the crowding mortals.
Nekhara continued following Canak’s butler through a narrow alleyway, enclosed on either side by walls of mismatched materials. Ragged lengths of cloth served as doors, where more faces emerged to stare as she passed. Some of their eyes reflected the dim lantern light and Nekhara realized not all of the watchers were human.
Refuse accumulated in every alcove explained part of the urban stench. She felt the grit of sand underfoot and glanced downwards, immediately regretting it. There were no gutters along the passageways, only the sand, forming clumps of human excrement.
…my home, my Spire, a palace from the gods, and they fill it with shit and piss…
Overhead, more pale faces stared down unashamedly from rickety catwalks that linked the ramshackle buildings. Nekahra noted that most of the onlookers above were children, and surmised that even the most emaciated adult would almost surely collapse the frail bridges, perhaps taking down adjacent buildings. There was hardly any more sustenance to these mortals than there had been in the men she’d already devoured. They were all equally malnourished of both body and soul, each nearly mindless as any given animal. They ate, bred, and died for nothing but the habit of it all like so many rats, and so they would continue for so long as there was just enough gruel to sustain them.
Still, that insatiable hunger ached in her every unnatural bone. The urge was nearly overwhelming, to grasp any one of them, lift them up, and watch life itself leave their eyes as it flowed into her. Canak had commanded his valet to see that she was fed once they ascended to those rooms that were to be hers, though, and so Nekhara hurried along behind Canak’s valet, rushing through the layers of the subterranean slum as quickly as the guards could force the human mobs out of the way.
They finally reached a familiar stairway near the cavernous ceiling and Nekhara turned to the desecrated chamber below. “What is the purpose of this… slum?” She inquired of the valet while she watched the mortals scurrying some thirty-odd feet below, retreating to their hovels.
Canak’s butler retraced a few steps to stand beside her. He gazed down as well with an odd glimmer of pride in his expression, the corners of his mouth turning up into the faintest of smiles. “Undoubtedly, you noticed the Drinkers amongst them?” He began, continuing once Nekhara nodded confirmation. “They are the cattle that graze upon the mortals. No man would eat filthy, trodden grass from a field, but a fine steak he will readily devour. Thus is our way here.”
No stranger to cruelty, Nekhara’s face remained blank. “And who decides which of you are cattle, and which of you are men?”
The valet cast a dubious glance at her in response, so she answered her own question. “Shyss, of course.” She grumbled, rolling her gritty eyes in their sunken sockets.
“Master Canak,” the butler emphasized his lord’s proper title, “determines which neophytes are worthy of His blood, and which are cast down to await their harvest time.” That seemed enough of an explanation to him as he turned again to leave.
Nekhara’s curiosity was quelled, however temporarily, so she followed without further questioning.
The chamber above clearly served as some sort of barracks for the soldier caste. As she circled the center room from an interior balcony that curved towards the next stairway, she watched them playing the same games of cards and dice that had been the staple entertainment for men at war since time immemorial.
More winding steps led to the next chamber, where the walls were draped in bright fabric to hide the dark stone of the Spire. Nekhara surmised what occupied these levels even before she saw them. Satyrs were all chatting amicably in the pillow-laden foyer. Some were weaving, some were spinning, some were sewing, and some were simply laid out on settees and cushions, gulping wine from painted jugs and feeding each other grapes. Whatever they did, the communal conversation continued without pause, even as they noticed her and the valet passing by. She reactivated her sense of smell and breathed deep of the incense smoldering in dozens of hanging vessels around the chamber. She savored the aroma as long as she could while they reached another curving stairwell.
Through the archway ahead, pillars of green-black stone were illuminated by dozens of flickering flames atop massive candelabra. Her stride quickened excitedly til she was ahead of Canak’s butler. She crossed to the center of the room and turned to gaze upwards at the familiar room, one that still looked just as it had so very long ago.
Except for the candles.
She went to a column and laid her hand upon the stone, feeling it humming faintly. “What did they do to you…” Nekhara unintentionally whispered aloud.
The butler huffed. “Master Canak found this ruin half-buried in the midst of the Dune Seas.” He said sourly. “He has only improved upon it since.”
Nekhara cast a withering glare at the valet. “Not you, or your damned Master.” She spat, though the scorn quickly faded from her features. “A desert?” She hissed. The valet nodded, causing Nekhara to shake her head in contrast. “No, no, no…” She whispered continually, suddenly racing down a nearby corridor, one she knew would take her to a balcony. There, she could see for herself what had become of the world. WIth her frustration mounting, she struggled to open the towering arched doors at the end of the corridor but eventually succeeded in making a passage just wide enough for her skeletal frame.
A lance of sunlight utterly blinded Nekhara, until her eyes artificially adjusted.
When she could finally see the landscape before her, she stopped. Utterly still, she stared out at the desert which stretched to the horizon in every direction. Hot wind whipped up her rotting clothes, blew her trailing hair amongst the sand swirling along the stone underfoot while she stood unmoving, desperately seeking to understand. Each lens cycled within her eyes, until one showed her what else was blowing with the dust on the desert wind.
//::RADIATION ANALYSIS PENDING. . .
The text flashed in the upper lefthand corner of her vision. A processor whirred laboriously within her skull as the calculations produced further readouts:
//::HAZARD RATING: NONLETHAL . . .
//::CONFIGURING FILTRATION CONSTRUCT TO MINIMIZE BIOLOGICAL DAMAGE . . .
Nekhara felt the movement within her abdomen as her organs adapted to better process the ambient radiation, though it was no more harmful than the sun beating down upon her exposed skin.
The readout continued.
//::SOURCE . . . ARTIFICIAL
-CONSISTENT WITH MASARI WEAPON SATELLITES
-ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT APPROX 6,335 YEARS AND 8 MONTHS PRIOR TO DATE OF ANALYSIS
She turned her head to the sky and felt the telescopic lens expand within her eye. Barely visible opposite the sun, where night was just creeping over the horizon, was a bright spot, a steady reflection too close to be any cosmic body.
Nekhara’s frown deepened.
…over six thousand years in sustained orbit, so it’s probably operating autonomously, but no way to know if they’re still watching…
“Ahem.” The butler’s tedium-laden voice came from some ways behind her.
She twisted around to see him standing just out of the sunlight’s reach within the corridor.
“Shall we continue?” He asked through a definitive frown, patience clearly exhausted.
Nekahra noted his tone, but rushed back inside all the same. Better to get out of the satellite’s sight quickly as she could. She followed Canak’s servant back down the corridor, back to the foyer with its twisting staircases, where the odd pair continued their climb. Each following floor was quiet, devoid of activity except for the hurried footsteps of servants attending to their work. They were all mortal, at first, and while clearly allowed to bathe somewhat often compared to those she had seen below, they still had the same malnourished physique as their fellows.
Another ten, or perhaps it had been twenty, further stairways leading to yet more circular chambers all grouped in threes, and Nekhara noticed that though they wore the same drab, unembellished, unisex uniforms, more and more of the servants were clearly Drinkers. Their heads were bald, too, but without the stubbly regrowth the humans had.
“You enslave your own kind for domestic tasks, as well?” Nekhara asked with a shadow of sardonic humor. She was surprised to hear Canak’s butler chuckle.
“‘Indentured servants’ would be a more apt moniker.” He responded without breaking stride. “A couple of centuries performing menial tasks, in exchange for being spared from the Pit.” He continued with a shrug.
Nekhara’s eyebrows raised dubiously. “And some still choose the… Pit?”
Another chuckle from the valet. “The opportunity is not presented to every piece of fresh meat. No common thieves or debtors or any other such riffraff. Every so often, the Merchant Princes and their Courts need rid of a political rival, or an unsubtle mistress, or an uppity bastard.” He sounded amused. “These… undesirables find themselves aboard the slavers’ wagons with all the rest, but they’re easily sniffed out even when stripped of all their finery.”
Nekhara had enough information to ponder without further questioning, assembling an understanding of this new regime. So much time had passed, and yet they were still so primitive. Candles, wagons, princes! The endless desert had surely necessitated survival over progress, that she could understand. She had more questions for Shyss by the moment.
Canak’s valet finally came to a stop. He opened an unassuming door, one nearly identical to the hundreds of others they had passed, and gestured to the rooms beyond.
“Are these accommodations acceptable to… my Lord’s esteemed guest?” He asked with the expected bow once she had stepped past him.
She roused herself from internal reverie enough to note the snideness of the Drinker’s tone. “Deliberately tactful as ever, your Master.” The Elf-ghoul mused aloud. “Middle-court apartments, so as not to offend his ‘esteemed guest,’” she paused for a pointed sneer and watched a shiver pass down the parasitic tendrils of the valet’s spine, “nor any of his own court. I suppose that is, in fact, acceptable.”
At the very moment the servant lifted a boot to make his departure, she began again. “I expect you’ll be retrieving suitable attire while I make use of the bath.” She glared down at the butler. “That is what your Master bade you to do next, isn’t it?” Her smirk widened as a snarl twitched the Drinker’s lip for a fraction of a second.
“He did, indeed.” The valet grumbled.
Before he could display further insolence, Nekhara’s long arm flashed out like a striking snake. Her thin fingers easily pierced the flesh between his ribs. The thing within him shrieked and flailed, forcing him to do the same.
“Do you think your Lord Canak heeled in my very presence because I am someone to be trifled with?” Nekhara hissed, dragging him towards her until she could see her own wretched visage reflected in his bulging eyes.
The man’s voice wailed over the unnatural shrieks: “No! NO!”
She flung him to the floor and crushed the sodden remnants of her slipper against his sternum until the rotted material squelched between her toes. Fluid poured from his punctured chest onto the floor, and writhing tentacles emerged from the wounds to lap it up.
“Get out.”
Nekhara plunged into the bath.
The water was deep, submerging her completely. She opened her eyes, grateful to feel the moisture quickly permeating them. She didn’t bother to turn herself upright, and her hair floated above her. The long, dark tendrils swayed like kelp in the sea.
…sunlight, in the water, so long ago…
The warmth of the bath sank her ancient bones long before the water could swell her desiccated flesh. She watched the runes carved into the stone around her come alight, dissolving the decay peeling away from her rejuvenating flesh.
…so… very… long…
Her eyes closed again, succumbing immediately to restless throes behind her thin eyelids.
“Vei, nek-hara!”
His face, she could no longer recall, but her father’s voice cried out unchanged within her mind.
“VEI!”
Blades met and their metal screamed together.
A hand, dripping iridescent blood and pulsing verdant magic, reached for her and she took it..
“Erita… nek-hara…”
The last hope of her dying mother, limp hand slipping through her tiny fingers.
“Come now…”
Strange words in a stranger’s voice.
Leather creaked as the gauntlet curled to wipe tears from her little cheek.
“...What is your name?”
She could not understand, so she made a familiar sound, calling for help that would never come.
“Ah, Little Raven, it is, then.”
Nekhara’s eyes opened. Her hair still waved with the water, obscuring her long legs almost completely. She could see the pale green of her own skin again, and all the facets of the crystal in her chest. Tiny points of seedling stones were also visible, having grown while she’d slumbered, and died, and decayed.
She turned in the water, feeling her feet meet the bottom of the immense bath. Her ears emerged as she reached the low steps leading out of the bath, and heard chittering nearby. Another step, and she saw Canak’s butler standing a meter or so from the bath’s edge. Behind him were two other figures.
The butler cleared his throat and the chittering stopped. “Eternal Empress…” the valet practically growled with a begrudging respect that had clearly been driven into his brain by some means he was not altogether comfortable with, “...may I introduce the Lord Canak’s own daughters, the Ladies Ascending Irsu and Yrrta.”
The utterly indistinguishable sisters stepped forward as one and curtsied. Their slender hands flourishing ornate red skirts as their heads bowed. Hair ornaments chimed softly with the movements as their crimson tresses slipped over their shoulders. Their long ears were thoroughly warped in the distinctly Polaesi way, and their identical, delicate features were unmistakably Fae.
Nekhara stepped clear of the water. Freed of corrosion and rot, golden rings glimmered along her ears and down her throat. Each one was at least three inches across and delicately thin. Her hair, still trailing in the water a few steps behind, glinted with gold bands and spirals of ornamental wire.
One of the twins unfurled the bundle in her arms, revealing a heavily embroidered dressing gown lined with bronze-colored silk. The Polaesi youth lifted the robe high in her petite hands, just barely reaching Nekhara’s shoulders. Her sister busied herself with gathering Nekhara’s hair from the bath, moving with their guest as she swirled with uncanny grace and slipped her long arms into the offered sleeves, which ended barely past her elbows just as the hem fell barely below her knees.
Nekhara noted these short-comings and turned an exasperated expression upon Canak’s servant, who nervously cleared his throat. He began to explain hastily. “Unfortunately, there are no other residents within the Spire matching your… stature.”
An amused smirk replaced Nekhara’s exasperation as the butler continued. “When… Your Excellency… is ready, the Master has extended his invitation to utilize any of the resident tailors to begin work on more… bespoke attire.” He elaborated.
Nekhara inspected the utterly immaculate embroidery. “I see there has been no diminishment in the Satyr’s craftsmanship.” She mused pleasantly. She approached the girls, then, who were both nearly two meters tall, and inspected them. Even her augmented eyes could not distinguish between the symbiotic threads and the Elven cells that composed the young Ladies flesh. “Interesting.”
Irsu and Yrrta looked at each other with their enormous black eyes and began chittering again. Excited grins on their black-painted lips revealed canid sets of teeth, all narrow and needle-sharp like pups’ first fangs.
“The Lady Yrsua would be honored to have one so revered to tutor her daughters.” The butler said, and the girls curtsied again.
“Not the Lady Canak?” Nekhara inquired.
Irsu and Yrrta squealed something like giggles and Lord Canak’s servant surprisingly smiled, though his eyes looked down at his own boots somewhat bashfully. “There are… several Ladies Canak.” He answered with politely embarrassed bemusement.
…some things never change…
“The Ladies, therefore, prefer to be addressed by their given names… to avoid confusion.” The butler continued.
Nekhara glanced from the girls’ ageless faces to Canak’s servant again. “And this would be a… permanent position?” She asked with a measuredly disdainful concern.
Canak’s servant chuckled. “If you are asking if the Ladies Ascending will ever… ascend to adulthood, yes. Master Canak’s progeny that are born of the womb do mature, in their own time, however slowly that may be.”
The frown on Nekhara’s face turned further downward and she hissed out a response: “What!?”
“I will let the Master explain his own machinations; I fear I would not do justice to his brilliance.” The butler continued with a reverent bow of his head at the mention of Lord Canak.
A momentary flaring of nostrils betrayed Nekhara’s annoyance. “Fine.” She mumbled and turned to the twin Ladies again. Structures within her throat writhed beneath her skin. When she spoke again, her voice slithered out with the uncanny reverberation only a Fae-borne could interpret. The rings piercing the front of her throat clinked melodically against each other, like so many tiny chimes.
“Sy’thyr-dorrei’ma?” The syllables all seemed to overlap and intertwine.
Irsu and Yrrta visibly straightened before responding in unison. “Sorit-da.”
“Gaila.”
Yrrta and Irsu bowed their heads and curtsied slightly again.
Behind them, Nekhara noticed that Canak’s butler was taking leave of his own accord. Something between a snarl and a sneer crossed her face just before she stooped to speak quietly to the girls. “Aiyt’thysser-sol’sah’vynt.” She whispered so softly that even the little Ladies’ preternatural ears struggled to hear. When they understood, though, predatory grins split their faces nearly ear to ear.
“Arhytt-aya!” Nekhara barked and even in the incomprehensible language of the Fae, the command was undeniable.
The butler’s boot-heels clacked together, unwillingly halting himself just past the doorway. He’d barely had time to turn his scowling face towards her before she was looming over him.
“You were not dismissed, servant.” The ancient one hissed with her Elven throat, giving the Common words a queer accent that was as unsettling to the butler as her sinister leer.
The thing within him tensed, drawing his hands into defensive claws and flooding the shared mind and body with animal apprehension. “I am the Master’s own servant, the right hand that returns to Him when my task is done. Exalted as you may be to some here, I am not yours to command!” The butler spoke with surprising dignity despite the symbiotic entity’s wordless yet emphatic resistance to the act.
A silent moment passed and Canak’s valet moved to leave again, only to find he could not. Blood dribbled down his chin from his mouth, which opened and closed silently, like a fish asphyxiating in open air. Confusion knitted his brows just before the involuntary wail of agony escaped him. The deafening cry gargled the escaping blood from his mouth in a delicate pink foam.
Nekhara’s hand was deeper within his chest this time, wrapped around his sternum while her fingers laced between his ribs like lovers’ hands entwined. Her grip tightened as he began to struggle wildly. His wails lost all humanity, devolving rapidly to beastly roars.
The Eternal Empress turned to Irsu and Yrrta, who regarded the unfolding scene with aristocratic ambivalence barely masking their amusement.
“Yai’la-ubyt-myr.” She said to them in calm contrast to the flailing creature in her grasp. The twins nodded and fell into stride behind their tutor.
“Second lesson!” Nekhara spoke in accented Common for her captive’s benefit. They passed into another room within the disgraced Empress’s assigned apartments. She crossed the wide parlor towards a line of metallic sculptures standing at attention, just as innumerable identical ones did in other rooms throughout the Spire.
She lifted the screaming servant level with one of the constructs. His fists beat at her arm with a force that would shatter mortal bone, but her malevolent sneer only widened as she felt his pitifully organic phalanges fracturing against her alloy-augmented limb. His feet kicked frantically at the open air with equal futility as she suddenly yanked him close. His eyes bulged as he strained away from her, like a spooked horse straining to flee.
“A servant with his own mind serves only himself.” Nekhara said, staring into his fearful face before cutting a glance at her new proteges. Yrrta and Irsu each gave a single nod of understanding. “Yathas!” Nekhara snapped and with an almost flippant motion, she tossed the servant away from herself. She watched the miniscule moment of relief cross his face, for he did not understand the command.
Then, the mechanical maw enveloped him. Metal appendages snapped closed like some convoluted bear-trap. The snapping of bones was just louder than the whirring machinery.
The twins flinched with each of the first few cracks while Nekhara stood still with a look of vacant satisfaction on her face. Little lights flickered to life along her brow in a pattern mirrored upon the domed ‘head’ of the construct. The machine’s first movements were clunky and crude as a marionette. It seemed to be testing the function of its own limbs until, eventually, it managed to clap its fist to its chest with a sharp clank.
The young Ladies flinched again.
The construct knelt at Nekhara’s feet, where it would have stayed for an eon had she not commanded it to another task.
“Syth’es-sowwa.”
The lights on its domed face flickered furiously before dwindling to a single pulse of orange.
Nekhara huffed with exasperation at the text blinking in the upper corner of her left lens.
//:no network connection…
//:linguistic database inaccessible…
//:present neural map incompatible…
//:command translation failed…
She blinked the error explanations away and tried again with irritation graveling her voice through gritted teeth. [color=8dc73f]“Summon the fucking tailor!” Nekhara barked.
Tiny implements plucked a visceral pizzicato within the butler’s throat to speak with the dead man’s voice: “As you wish, Your Excellency.” The construct stood easily, though its following steps were clumsy as a child’s. Its stride eventually lengthened into an imitation of the tense, deliberate gate of its butler-battery.
The remaining trio watched it exit the parlor and pass out of sight. Once the mechanical servant was gone, Nekhara settled into a nearby chair with the long fingers of one hand rubbing circles into her temple.
“Father may not like that.” Irsu said cautiously after a few moments’ deliberation.
Without looking at the girl, Nekhara answered.
“I don’t give a fuck what your father likes.”
When the tailor arrived, escorted by the mechanized servant, the three She-Elves were still in the parlor. The twins’ own attendants had joined them. Four Polaesi women, with their bald heads bowed and hands folded, stood a respectful distance behind Irsu and Yrrta, who were seated across a low table from their mentor. The trio were eagerly conversing, altogether ignoring the arrival of the servile posse.
Nekhara held a huge chalice with its base resting on her chair’s upholstered arm. The table near her other hand held a platter of delicacies, which she readily grazed upon whenever one of the mentees had her turn to speak. Whatever lesson was at hand eventually reached its own natural conclusion and, as the conversation dwindled, Nekhara looked over the girls’ swiveling heads to finally wave the fearfully patient craftsmen forward.
“Lady Yrsua’s personal tailor,” the robotic pizzicato recited as an aged Satyr stepped forward and bowed as much as his hunched spine would allow while the construct continued, “and his apprentices.”
Two much younger Satyrs bowed behind the master tailor.
“Task completed; now, take that pitcher from this trembling wench before her cowardice sends my wine crashing to the floor.” Nekhara spoke to the thick glass face of the construct, who immediately obeyed. The Polaesi woman looked all too eager to surrender her burden and the scrutiny that accompanied it. The machine-servant refilled its mistress’s chalice even as she stood and approached the tailor, who bowed again. After a long drink from the cup, she said: “Let’s get on with it, then.”
“Y-y-yes, Your Excellency.” The tailor stuttered and motioned to the taller of his apprentices. The youth stepped forward and placed the stool he carried at Nekhara’s feet. The other apprentice placed a small ladder near the stool, and both stepped back.
Nekhara stood on the presented stool as the aged Satyr carefully climbed the few steps of the ladder and removed a measuring tape from around his neck. “Let us hope your hands are steadier than your tongue.” Nekhara scoffed, and the tailor swallowed hard.
His hands were steady, though, despite the fearful quivering of his eyes. He began reading her measurements aloud, though the smaller apprentice holding a well-worn little book in his youthful hands, was unmoving, staring up at Nekhara.
“Lysander!” The tailor hissed, snapping his apprentice into action.
“Mother likes her tailor. Please do not make him into a machine.” Irsu offered respectfully, and Nekhara smiled without looking at her.
“Worry not, my pupils. Such a capable craftsman is secure within his purpose.” She answered.
Minutes later, the tailor and his company were bowing as they backed from the chamber, the first stage of their work completed.
Nekhara returned to her chair and her construct refilled her cup. She attempted to resume her conversation with the young disciples, only to be interrupted by the synchronized motion of the attendants. The twins perked up suddenly, then lowered their eyes. “Father requests an audience.” The two said as one.
Nekhara sighed. “Due time, I suppose.” She said as she swirled the wine in her glass before downing it. The young Ladies curtsied and took their leave, followed by their attendending servants.
Canak arrived almost immediately after, and sat at a small table in her parlor before motioning her to join him. Nekhara hesitated before obliging the Polaesi Lord. Her mechanical slave followed, its steps no longer thunking against the stone floor. It fulfilled its ongoing task of keeping its mistress’s chalice full.
She took a deep drink while Shyss spoke. Her brows raised in undisguised incredulity.
“So, you have truly taken up the cause?” Nekhara asked with a scoff and a small shake of her head. “I suppose it’s the least you could do, given what’s been, well, given to you.” She made a dismissive gesture. ”I must confess I truly never imagined we’d be serving under the same banner.” The Elf said, staring pensively at the wine in her cup. “Although, I suppose we both were given the same dismal choice, eh?” She mused, tapping a long finger against the base of the chalice.
“I wasted some six millenia ‘trapped in a prison of my own design,’ as you so succinctly said, and at least half as long living amongst our mutual enemies before that. My tether,” she paused to open her robe slightly to show the sickly green stone embedded in her breastbone, “was… disconnected for my first two thousand years here. The wormholes, the ‘portals,’ as you would call them, tend to misalign Time during the voyage. Once I was able to contact our… homeworld, I learned that events I had already lived were still to come. Time is anchored upon re-manifestation, but life unfolds differently under the… proper influence. A single whisper of betrayal yet to come turned the tide of the war, did it not?” Another pause for his acknowledgement.
“Having already assured the longevity of Mother’s reign, we must now move to… forge, if you will, a stable passage for the whole of the Horde.” She continued, and put her hand against the wall immediately beside them, causing a sudden swell of light to show the dormant power still trickling through the petrified Spire. “I can reawaken this spawn of Cur’Chu’Al,” she smirked, letting the gravity of that information sink in, “but the amount of energy required will be massive. I had devices in place for collecting that, but I was found out by the Masari, the other damned Fae that I followed here, before I could utilize it. Those devices were destroyed when they fled and killed the world they’d spent three thousand painstaking years to perfect.” A wry chuckle escaped her. “I barely made it to the stasis chamber, where you found me, but all the instruments governing my timed release must’ve been destroyed in the bombardment as well.” She visibly shuddered at the memory of her confinement. “Reconstructing such complex things is beyond the… frankly primitive capabilities currently available to us. There is a simpler way, though.” An insidious grin split her face.
Two of her slender fingers, no longer skeletal, grasped one of the larger points growing from the parent crystal in her chest. There was a hissing of heat as her bones broke through her skin, extending and twisting around the smaller stone, turning red hot as they severed it from the whole. She set the pointed crystal on the table and sliced her own fingertip with a suddenly razor-sharp fingernail. With her augmented circulatory system once again operating as designed, the machine fluids were separated from her biological blood. A fat drop of iridescent green fell from her finger onto the crystal, and the thing crackled audibly as it replicated itself.
“Pound for pound, your half-dead slaves are worth less than the bread it takes to sustain them, but if we put your ‘cattle’ to the slaughter and slit every single throat, we might manage a single message to the Undead Empress…” She nervously clicked her long nails against the tabletop. “Once we are assured Her horde will be ready and waiting, I can bring our world to this one, with a little help from the other side, and a lot more blood. The memories of mortals are short, indeed, but we shall soon remind them what it means to make war.”
