Death Blade - Part six

V.  Commander Casian:
Casian strode down the two-mile long, elaborate corridor heading to the chamber of the high council. What had Bicarno meant? Who was he really?

The entire corridor was fashioned of polished gold encrusted with exotic symbols and powerful visions of mans superiority amongst the other children of the galaxy. It showed history that had long since been lost, and elaborated more than anything else on the ascension of the first high council. It was lit by balls of smokeless flame that hovered overhead.

Over the heavily scented air Casian could smell the faint, musty and heavily disguised whiff of age, this corridor had stood a silent testament to the councils power for sixty six thousand years.

The sheer amount of the precious metal was overwhelming and slightly disorientating, wherever you looked, the maddening glint of gold, stretching far off into the distance that was obscured by a cloud of incense. 

Arrayed down the corridor were the eerie council guard, faceless and swinging incense burners as gently as a soft breeze, the scented smoke rising to the ceiling ten metres above, where it hung in a ghostly cloud. Casian knew not to underestimate the council guard, whilst they appeared unarmed, they could crush a mans skull with nothing but the power of their minds. They wore single piece robes that covered their entire bodies, including their heads, like burial shrouds, and nothing else other than a simple gold band around each of their necks and a plain sheet of the same metal over where their faces should have been. They let Casian past without question, any lesser mortal would have been stopped long before they entered these hallowed chambers.

Finally, at the end of the long journey was a gigantic double door fashioned, predictably enough, from gold. It was engraved with images of the first council, Casian wondered if they could ever dreamt of what their simple, noble establishment would one day become.         

He swung the huge doors open with ease, a task that would usually have required at least four men, and stepped in. Casian had visited the council many times, but it was always disconcerting to walk in and see the one hundred men and women wired into and hanging limp from the huge diamond wall, like so many flies stuck to a particularly large and shiny sheet of fly paper. Looking through the clear wall you could see the energy vortex lapping against the reinforced walls of its prison, a sea of soaring plasma, constantly suckling the helpless creatures crucified on the walls with pure energy, an exhausted mother feeding her ravenous baby.

They were completely naked, only their faces were covered with sheets of gold. Casian could see beneath this shining façade to their dreamy relaxed expressions that washed over their wide-eyed, lolling faces, reminiscent of someone who has been smoking Shio-Sharni marsh weed for a little too long.

To his discomfort he noticed how as usual they were all in a state of high arousal, withered penises and wrinkled nipples erect and quivering.

He was not disgusted by their shrivelled, pathetic bodies however, the buzzing wires and pulsing tubes pinching out pale strained flesh pockmarked with needle scars, pumping all number of unnameable fluids around their spread eagled corpses. He had learned to live with it long ago. After all, they were the guiding light of all mankind.

"Mission was a success.

Welcome."

Said one hundred, sweet echoing voices directly into his mind. They twitched slightly and Casian was reminded of the horrors he had seen deep in the caverns of Morthiot.

“Indeed it is good to be back, my lords and ladies” he replied giving a curt bow.

"You have a question."

They asserted.

“Yes Lords and Ladies.”

"Bicarno was a traitor.

His words mean nothing."

They seemed keen to get that point across. It was strange, how Casian almost felt he could detect a trace of fear in their collective voice.

“But I have to know Lords and Ladies, who am I really?”

"Theodus of Earth.

Codenamed Casian."

They said dully.

“Really?” snapped Casian.

"Would we lie?"

Casian decided that was an excellent question. He knew things about the council, things that reeked to the high heavens. He had experienced first hand how they were more than capable of manipulating ‘the truth’ for their own goals. 

"Two weeks off duty.

Go to Domeerus.

We have problems there."

Casians heart sank. He had heard that dull uncommittal phrase before. ‘We have problems there’ was how they chose to describe what happened on Morthiot. He knew what he would find there, nothing but blood, madness and death.

“That is terrible news lords and ladies, Domeerus is one of our main arms suppliers. So why should I remain here for a fortnight when there is such danger to be eliminated?”

"Linwe."

“What of her?”

"Initiate her."

“What? Why? She has no wish to be among us!” protested Casian, shocked at the sudden, frivolous nature of their request.

"We have seen it."

“I trust your judgement, lords and ladies, she may be initiated, but why should we forestall military aid to Domeerus? Why risk millions of lives for a single initiation?”

"Without her there can be no victory.

We have seen it."

Casian was sure there was a trace of anger and madness beneath that silky exterior.

“I hardly…” he began, but the council interjected pleasantly. 

"You have your orders.

Be gone."

“I will lords and ladies, I will” snarled Casian backing out of the room.

VI. Linwe:
Linwe stood silently as if in prayer at a place of worship, gasping at her surroundings, humbled completely by her new abode.

It was about fifteen by twenty metres, the walls were sleek, elegantly curved and glowed with a heavenly light. A central column of glass containing flickering red plasma like an insect trapped in a jam jar provided a centrepiece, in one corner her plush, spongy gel bed, in another an amoebic computer system.  A small closed off area contained a toilet and a relaximersion tank, another contained a virtua-sense entertainment cubicle. Several varieties of exotic, lightly perfumed and brightly blooming alien plants sprouted from several spots on the walls, tumbling down almost to the floor.     

When she first arrived there was a psychically transmitted message for her from the illustrious High council. It was pretty basic and sounded a little insincere saying they deeply grieved for the destruction of her world, the death of her friends and family, and of course, the loss of her post as one of the gifted few at the forefront of human genetic research. They offered this new home in the bosom of mankind in compensation, as well as full Earthling Noble citizenship and access to all the facilities the planet had to offer.

She had heard a lot of the so-called ‘Earthling Nobles’. They were divided into two main categories:

Centuries old men and women with huge stores of accumulated wealth, usually ex-planetary governors or retired managers of galaxial corporations.

The second group were the pure-bred psychics. Bred like cattle to be superior to the common man, every one gifted from birth with extra-sensory perception, telekinesis and many other astonishing, godly powers. If these gifts did not become apparent within a few days of birth, they were slaughtered like vermin to prevent impurities creeping into their hallowed ranks.

There was a third, minority group of which Linwe was now a part; ordinary mortals whom the council felt deserved the advantages of nobility, through courageous acts or extraordinary loss.       

Rather strangely at the end of her welcome message was a footnote; It suggested that if she wished to continue her service to humanity, she should join the hallowed ranks of the Taui-kun.

That was not right, she was not cut out to be a warrior, she had no place among heroes. Or did she? Perhaps… as Larian was one… piped up a sneaky voice in her head, she forced that annoying little voice to shut up, there was nothing there, she didn’t need him…

Quite suddenly, she began to wobble, her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the smooth transparent gel of the bed. She began to shake and shudder uncontrollably. Then she started to cry in great heaving, wracking sobs. Tears streamed down her face in a tidal wave of grief. Everyone she had ever known was dead. She would never see their faces again, never hear their kindly voices. She was the only person to survive, so there was no one for her. She was so alone and in this strange new place expected to start afresh and sweep her previous life under the rug of subconsciousness. She could not recall any fond and happy memories of those she had lost, only images of their screaming bloody deaths.

She tried to calm herself down, she took deep breaths and wiped the tears from her eyes. A lump of shattered glass remained in her throat that she could not dislodge   

“Linwe” she jumped and turned around to see Casians gigantic form towering behind her.

“What to you want” she stammered. “And how did you get in here?”

“Come with me Linwe, I need to show you something” he smiled “And in answer to your question, as commander of the Angels of death, I can call upon any human citizen I wish, at anytime.” he said, walking out the door, gesturing for her to follow.

She wiped her eyes and followed him out the door and into the cylindrical corridor. It was elegant and simple, made of a smooth material that was surgically white. It glowed softly, providing the corridors lighting. A seemingly endless array of doors stood at regular intervals, seamless, marked only by their identiscanners and a golden room number. It was very different to what she had known on 526… there she had slept in what, compared to here, was a cell on the infamous hellhole of prisoner colony 24. She had shared her room with two other women, Janet and… and…? She had forgotten. The crushing pain of it flooded into her chest cavity like molten lead. Both women long dead now, their bleeding corpses vaporised. She was the only person in the universe that knew they had ever existed… and she had forgotten one of their names…

Now they were out of the endless corridor, out into another made entirely of transparisteel. She gasped, even though she had seen it before, it was still the most fantastic view in existence:

They were suspended some fifty kilometres into the atmosphere of Earth; all around them floated an ethereal cloud of gigantic, city-sized crystal bubbles that blazed in the midday sun. They were linked by a spiderweb of shining diamond, glistening strands of angelic hair; one of which they were in now. It was surreal, stretching on past the horizon, with no visible means holding them in their courtship with the clouds.

She felt as though she was within a glass of sparkling champagne, but every flash of stardust was an entire community of about ten million people, thriving cities bobbing up and down in the gentle current of the high atmosphere.

Far below them was mother Earth in all her organic lustre and beauty; undespoiled by mankind for over ten millennia. Bright, vivid colours smothered the ground, in crazy artistic streaks and splashes of vibrancy: carpets of red roses, purple violets, pink foxgloves, yellow buttercups and many other colours she couldn’t put a flower to. And above all, lush, loamy green grass.

But there was no time to linger. They had to move on, so Linwe tore her eyes from the magnificent sights around her and followed Casian through the passage until they went inside another bubble.

They stood in front of a huge ornately decorated doorway. Above it, in shimmering writing, were written the words:

‘Honour the Taui-kun, salvation of humanity.
Praise the Taui-kun, protectors of purity.
Glorify the Taui-Kun, righteous warriors.
Revere the Taui-kun, for they give their sacred lives for our pitiful existences.’

Casian led her through the door into a wall of warm, fragrant, incense thick air. And for the first time in her life, she saw the true glory and splendour of the Taui-Kun.
It was the most gigantic room Linwe had seen in her life, it would easily have encompassed the entire research station she had once lived, worked and almost died at twice over. It was entirely constructed of beautiful white marble that seemed to hold blazing white flame, laced with a lattice of sapphire veins. The ceiling far above was held aloft by gleaming pillars, which had been crafted into hundreds of life size Taui-Kun, separated by bands gold that blazed as if touched by the mid day sun.

Everywhere she looked Taui-kun were emblazoned: Shrines to long dead war heroes, the images of their faces rapt with the ecstatic agony of martyrdom.
Statues of helmet-less soldiers crafted from a material that looked like diamond frosted to an opaque milky white stood in powerful, awe inspiring poses, holding the tools of their trade high, blazing haloes forged from sheets of polished gold around their heads.

Full colour holographic dioramas of lionised Taui-Kun fighting back all manner of monsters and aliens set into the walls. Frozen frames that chronicled the lives, and deaths of the God-warriors, rendered so lifelike that it seemed at any moment the suspended jewels of blood, sweat and drool would drop, or that a mortally wounded fiend would shriek in its dying agonies.

In one scene a Taui-kun lay defeated atop a mound of slaughtered foe, his spirit bursting free of the flesh and into the waiting arms of a transcendent host of angels that soared from the heavens to bear him away, looks of unquestioning adoration and mortal sorrow on their faces. Linwe thought she could almost hear the faint susurration of the wind through the delicate feathers of their graceful wings.
In the end, that was the inevitable doom of every Taui-kun, to die on some far-flung world, his life-blood seeping into alien soil, his last breaths of extraterrestrial air.

Would he then ascend with the songs of angels in his ears?

She stopped dead. In front of her stood a blazing statue of Casian himself. He stood in a long stance, one massive foot planted triumphantly on a mound of cackling skulls. In his right hand he held his flaming sword pointed towards the heavens at forty-five degrees, his other hand holding a pistol just grasped from the holster. A dense look of unrestrained power and manly courage was pasted onto his face as he stared down the elegant line of his sword. His mouth silently sounded a victorious battle cry.     

She began to think of Casians history as a warrior and all the horrors he had lived through, all the dark entities he had fought back; keeping humanity alive.

“It is a great likeness, do you not think Linwe?” said Casian, Linwe was surprised by the painful acidity of the words. She looked up in fear and inquisitivity and saw the bitter agony in his eyes. Those eyes that had witnessed so much death and pain, weakened and hurt by this magnificent statue of their bearer. She watched in fascination as a tear began to form at the edge of his left eye. He blinked as if to rid his sight of a shard of grit, and it was gone.

Linwe read the embossed golden letters at the base of the statue:

Lord Casian at the purge of Dalmos five
In the year 66559
Praise him.
Praise all the Taui-kun for their courage.

Those words stirred a faint memory of her last moments at the research station:


“I am Commander Casian of the Angels Of Death” He replied curtly as he had hundreds of times before.

“ Casian… the hero of the Dalmos five crusade?”

“If you call bloody murder heroic.” He said resentfully


She had heard the very same bitterness in his voice then.

“What so troubles you about Dalmos five?” she asked. Casian looked down in barely hidden shock; perhaps he had never realised how easy he was to read, how much his emotions showed through the chinks in the curtain he wove around himself.

“I think Linwe, that that is a tale for another time.” There was no mistaking the harsh finality in his voice. He turned away from her. “Come, this is not what I wished to show you.”

Linwe followed obediently as he strode off.   

What must have been thousands of people were scattered around the room, some were the people of Earth, but most were men and women on a gigantic galaxy spanning pilgrimage, all come to worship the Taui-Kun. Every time they passed near one they opened their mouths in awe and fell to their knees quivering, crying

“Lord Casian! We honour you!” and Casian, having regained his composure, acknowledged each of them with a gracious smile, a nod of his head and replying:

“Then I shall protect you human!” and as they walked on by, Linwe could hear them sobbing excitedly, murmuring prayers, even kissing the ground where Casian had walked.

“Why do they do that?” Linwe said, puzzled.

“Because to them Linwe; we are gods.” Casian said solemnly.       
Priests walked among the pilgrims in their immaculate robes, chanting in religious ecstasy and swinging incense burners in wild arcs.   

She felt as though she was invisible, or perhaps more of an annoyance, she noted anger on the faces of those that did notice her. It was as if she should not be allowed so near Casian without offering him praise, or that they were far more worthy of the immortals company. 

The room seemed to stretch on forever and all along there were more and more adoring subjects, each of them viewed Casian with the same reverence, and Linwe with the same detest. She supposed she understood why they must feel that way.

They had each been raised from birth to praise the Taui-kun, to look up and to revere them as the gods they were. And then, perhaps the first time they had seen one of these great bastions of immortal glory, there is a nameless woman with him, standing side by side as if she were his equal.

As they neared another huge door in a corner of the room, one more thing caught her eye. Staring down at them from the wall, emblazoned in glory was a ferocious looking woman with fiery red hair, a pale complexion and sharp green eyes, in the colours of the Angels of Death.

“Who is that?” she asked

“That is Rowenian. She was Legion commander before me. She died in the purging of Dalmos five. She promoted me to my current status as she lay on her death bed.”

“Are there many women Taui-kun?” Casian didn’t answer. He was staring up at the statue of Rowenian in such a pained and reverential way that Linwe did not dare disturb him.

Was that it? Was this why Casian felt so much regret about the Dalmos 5 crusade? Because his old commander had died there? Or was it more than that?

Had he loved her?

Linwe would never know the answers to any of those questions. The only person who knew what had really happened on Dalmos five was Casian, and he would sooner take his own life than recount that old tale.

After a while Casian saluted the statue and turned from it, sighed and muttered two sorrowful words

“Fifty years…” then lead Linwe towards another door. Linwe tried to catch a glimpse of his face to see if his eyes were damp again, but she could not do it without angling her head too obviously. She suddenly felt wretched for trying to pry, what right had she to know? She thought as the knife of guilt twisted slowly in her belly.

Words were inscribed above this door, similar in tone to the last one:

They died for you. Honour them and pay back a small part of the debt you owe.

They walked in. This room was different from the last. She gasped in horror; stretching off farther than the eye could see were thousands of neatly ranked Taui-kun statues, silent sentinels to the unforgiving world around them. Each had their helmet off and wore a solemn expression, dignified, and yet anguished. Ethereal, yet so horribly mortal. Beneath each was a plaque: Linwe read the closest to her:

His most gloried Sergeant Calidius.
Fell fighting the Klaimen hoard,
In the year 54689.
May he go to his paradise,
And in his new-found eminence watch over us.
Praise him.
Praise all the Taui-kun for their sacrifice.

“This Linwe, is where we lay those that fell to rest. This is only the fist level of thirty six.”

“Thirty six levels, all like this?” she whispered “Why have you brought me here?” she said in a small, frightened voice.

“Linwe… the high council, they say you are…” he paused, considering “Important. They have seen you in their dreaming surveillance of the twisted paths of the future. They have seen you as a Taui-kun warrior. They have seen you doing great things, they bid me initiate you to our cause.”

“What?” Linwe trembled, this wasn’t right, it couldn’t be! She wasn’t a warrior; she could never to such great and noble things. Yet the council, they saw all… what was she to do?

“They told me that you must be initiated before we set off to our next mission, on Domeerus. Above all, it is still down to you. I brought you here so you could see us as we are, mortal beings, charged with so much. I brought you here so you could make your decision, knowing it could be the last you ever make.”

“I don’t understand! Why me?” but deep down inside, she already knew. It was the same reason project Genesis had saved her from the dragon, the reason she was the only survivor… she knew she was special, but how?

“I hate to press you Linwe, but your decision must be made now, every second we linger, innocent lives are lost.” He seemed almost to be pleading.

The world seemed to slow for her, every second was an eternity, everything became clear. She had a chance to become a goddess, a legend, an immortal within the minds of the citizens of the galaxy. All the same, it was all but inevitable that she would end up here again, dead in the marble ground, her statue stood above her, watching the world fly by. A simple plaque, proclaiming her name and deathbed, the only key to her lost identity.

But then, are we all not destined to obscurity? Why not make something of her life? Why not save innocent men and women? Why not fight for what she believed in?
But what did she believe in? In the end, was that her choice?

Rowen… that was her name! That was the name of her second roommate on 526. So her existence had not yet been totally lost. But Linwe still had a place in this great dream that we live in… 

Then, finally, without really knowing quite why, feeling as if the whole civilised galaxy was watching her every move with baited breath, she spoke those fatal words. “I accept”

VII. Commander Casian
“Malian, this is Casian, report to my quarters.”

“Yes sir” came the reply, almost instantaneously.

Casian sat down and sighed. What had happened on Morthiot? It was already feeling like a lost and confused memory. He massaged his temple with his hands. What role had Plior played in it all? Why had he sent the three of them alone against an enemy they could not possibly hope to defeat and only stepped in at the last second? It did not seem right, surely there was some higher purpose to his actions? But what?

Perhaps he had shared this information to the other members of the squad, when he had taken them aside and whispered to them in that voice that was a hairs breadth from silence. Malian. What was it Malian had said about Pliors words? That it was about the future, Casians future? He needed to know.

The door whispered open, and Malian marched in

“You requested to see me, sir.”

“Tell me friend, for I must know.” Said Casian softly. “What do you remember from the caves, what did Plior tell you?”

Malian looked up at Casian in a puzzled sort of way.

“What do you mean?” he said curiously. “There was no one alive in the caves. When we saw that they were all dead we turned back, and that was the end of it.”

“Are you sure?” said Casian, terror creeping into his heart. Just how much of this was real? How could he tell anymore what was the nightmare and what was not?

“Aye sir. The caves were empty.” Casian sat silently for a long while, staring at the smooth white floor, trying to grasp in his mind, memories, thoughts, anything to try and prove to himself that he was not going mad. But the harder he looked, the more seemed to seep away through his grasping fingers, wisps of fine sand tickling his skin.

“Its alright Malian, you can go.” He murmured, only just realising that his companion still sat dutifully in front of him.

As the man began to get up and walk away, Casian began to wonder, what if it was Malians memory that was in question? What if he had heard something that someone did not want him to hear? Casian remembered the slightly fearful tone of the High council when they denounced Bicarnos words, and that haughtily assuring question ‘would we lie?’

But what if they had got someone else to do it for them?   
 
VIII. Darkness:
Bicarno tumbled through endless blackness, screaming in unprecedented agony.

His eyes sizzled in their sockets, bubbling like molten plastic, his skin fried and scorched and his long white hair became ash. He writhed and contorted from the pain, twisting and whirling through licking flames of torture that crowned him with an unholy corona of torment.

“Orageos! Please! Relent!” he rasped past flame-cracked lips and a tongue of charcoal. “Release your good servant!”

You failed me!

bellowed a voice that sent transfixing jolts of pain down Bicarnos spine.

You had your chance to take him, but you forsook your duties in an ignorant, selfish act of utter vanity!

roared Orageos in a voice that reverberated in Bicarnos boiling guts.

“Please, master, you saw, you see all, it was Oratheos and one of his spawn, it was only in my devotion to you that I fought him.” He whined.

It is because of your incompetence that I remain here now! Do not mask it in false robes! Besides, there will be plenty of other opportunities in good time. Until then you shall remain here, with me. And learn the true meaning of damnation!

He bellowed with echoing laughter, Bicarno whined as the pain transcended to an even greater level.

IX.  Lady Linwe:
We can see you. We can see your mind.
You are special. You have a purpose. We can see you. We know what you are for.
You are going to die. Your death will be the gateway to new times. You will set us free.

Linwe coughed and a green bubble rose lazily in front of her nose. Gagging suddenly, she tried to scream, liquid frothing in her lungs. She was drowning; this was death, a few panicked moments before oblivion.

She kicked and thrashed her legs and felt wires and tubes wriggling in her flesh like feasting snakes.

Just like a few more dazed bubbles, blurred memories floated to her mind. The rising water, the excitement. The ritual chanting.

She remembered where she was, what was happening. She relaxed. She could feel air flooding through her lungs now; the liquid was supplying her with breath.

As she began to calm down, she realised how different everything was, the light… there was so much light… it was all so bright and vibrant. It was as if she had lived in a dim and shadowy cellar all her life, and one day had stumbled up the staircase, into a world of blazing crystal and pearly white sands, the sky a galaxy of exploding stars. 

She found it odd that her vision wasn’t blurred, even though she was submerged. There seemed to be an unrestrained sense of energy and life running through her veins and the muscles that covered every square centimetre of her body

She could see a hazy figure approaching through the green, then her vision seemed to contort, it focused in on him, for it was a man approaching her and the green faded away, her eyes were compensating for it. She recognised him. He was a short old man with cropped blonde-grey hair, dressed in overly extravagant robes that looked far too long for him. He had taken her to her initiation last week.

Her initiation… she had never felt so afraid, the penetrating voices of the high council had striped her down for inspection, judging her very soul. She remembered feeling as if she were naked in a courtroom. They had deemed her worthy, almost instantaneously, then asked her a few simple questions about her allegiance. She had not even entered their chamber. And that, was that. She had become Lady
Linwe, a Taui-kun of the Angels Of Death legion. It was surreal, though it had felt an eternity, she later found she had only been under inspection for less than five minutes. It had been so simple…

And now, here she was, a new woman, a goddess amongst mankind. Next came the training ordeals. She was not looking forward to that. She had heard of men driven nearly to their deaths in these.

Her eyes widened in horror as new images began to superimpose themselves over the man, a faint image of his skeletal structure grinned into being, columns of aged, arthritic bone accompanied by his exhausted internals, still twitching and pumping laboriously after what must have been at least five hundred years. She could read his temperature, and it was lower than it should have been.

Even in the liquid filled cubicle she could smell his age, the faint cologne he was wearing that smelt like withered lavenders, masking the slight hint of perspiration beneath. She could taste the air as if it were wine, although the liquid she was in masked it thickly with its harsh antiseptic, metallic taste.

She could hear his heart beat, slow and faint, followed by the rush of blood around his body. Each step he took was a gunshot, she could sense the smooth fabric he wore, to her ears it scratched and rubbed against his skin, rustling constantly in an insect like drone.

Nothing about him was hidden from her.

She could even see faint images through the walls of the chamber, there were many other cubicles like her own, none of them occupied. She shut her eyes, feeling slightly dizzy, the term ‘sensory overload’ seemed to rebound hatefully around the inside of her head. When she opened them, she found that she could easily fade some of the unwanted images down so they left only a faint residue, it was as easy and natural as blinking, though there was nothing to be done about her almost supernatural taste and hearing abilities.   

The liquid began to flood out and the walls came down with them. The old man stood a few metres away, funny; he seemed so much smaller now… she must be nearly double his height!

Then, it was done; she stood on new, powerful legs, rippling with barely restrained power. She was impressed and a little relieved to see that she had not put on nearly so much muscle weight as male Taui-kun, and that what she had gained hardly affected her figure at all. She had a feeling that she would have looked faintly ridiculous if she had biceps the size of a mans skull… In fact, she thought, looking down at her bared breasts, far from having lost her femininity in this induction to a largely male theatre, it almost seemed as if she had gained some… 

She was completely naked, though this seemed to have little or no effect upon the little old man, it seemed that his eye for the opposite sex had long since faded somewhere along the many centuries of his life.   

“Lady Linwe, your first task…” he paused lengthily and stood placidly, waiting.

“I accept it with my heart and soul” she blurted, that wasn’t a good start, for a moment she had totally forgotten the ancient etiquette that went with the rituals.

“Your first task is to activate your Mòróplex.”

“How am I to do that?”

“Concentrate, look deep into your subconscious mind.” She tried her hardest, but didn’t seem to be achieving much. She took a few deep breaths, calmed her nerves and waited for her next instructions.

What he told her to do next seemed strange, almost incomprehensible to her confused mind, but she tried anyway.

Seconds later, to her shock, joy and surprise, she felt a strange squirming, squirting sensation deep in her chest and then thick, oily Mòrón leaked out of her pores, which with her new eyes, she could see individually in incredible detail.

She was quickly coated in a clinging film of the stuff, gleaming, new and fresh. It felt odd at first, but she was already getting used to it.

“Excellent! Now test your joints.”

She did, she flexed her fingers and tried her arms and legs. Everything was perfect and atomic with energy.

“Very good, now follow me to the training hall.”

She could not wait; she practically bounded after him, eager to start using her new body, coated in its cloak of seething Mòrón. This was her rebirth, her second life started now.

X. Bio-Tech Warrior 138/AKY2K/556:
For a moment there was nothing but whirling colours and dancing starlight and then the warrior reappeared on the surface of Karill. The rust red dusty ground, the writhing seas of blood, the geysers, the lava flows, the dirty sulphurous yellow clouds dashing across the heavens, forked lighting crackling between them. And past the clouds, pitch black, a few stars gleaming out through the chaos. It was home. A flash of light, a thunderclap and a ferocious storm whipped up in a matter of seconds. It was raining blood, turning the dusty ground into a thick red paste.

Servos whirred and gears ground and then in the harsh voice of Its verbal synthesiser, It spoke

“Father Karill, show me the way!”

A bolt of lightning sizzled through the air and hit in the middle of a large lake, vaporising it, sending dust into the air into a seething storm of rusty fury. A tunnel was now evident where the lake had been. It stepped in and on instinct started plodding towards Its masters as the lake closed over behind It, a film of blood covering the entrance to the passageway.

It strode oblivious through the great caverns, ignoring the massed throngs of Karilion warriors, as they fought amongst themselves, baying for blood. Their gnarled foetal faces contorted with rage, thirst and pleasure. Their multiple, bladed appendages slashed, strangled and crushed in their constant lustful dance with death.

Today they fought amongst themselves because their food supply had been exhausted; their latest hunting raid had come back as shattered remnants, crushed by Taui-kun warriors. The bodies of their previous victims hung from the ceiling by their ankles, nothing but pale withered husks devoid of any of the precious life giving liquid.

But Father Karills veins had to be filled; it mattered not from whom the blood flowed.
And so the channels that lead to the chamber of the masters, the heart of Karil, gushed still with red richness. And for that the Karilions were glad.
It followed one of these conduits, before long It was there. The heart of the universe, the seat of Karils bloodstained empire. The chamber of the Masters. This was to where the blood flowed, to feed them and honour their ravenous patron god. It congregated to a massive writhing lake, hundreds of metres across, over which a slight skin of congealed gore had formed.

And seated above it, suspended somehow in mid air: were those that It answered to.     

There were four of them. They looked as all Karilions, but there was something more about them, something divine. Each looked almost like a human foetus, but with dark red flesh and a crest of horns around their proportionately large faces. Iron taloned fingers and toes and a mouthful of razor fangs glinted menacingly. Bladed and suckered tentacles sprouted like insane fungal growth from their abdomens.

They were around two metres large, but nearly twice their size, seated in the middle of them was the master of the masters; The current living incarnation of The bloodstained god. As he served his time as dreaded warlord of the Karilion people, his body would become bloated and he would continue to grow in size until Karil became tired of his current host, then he would devolve into what Karil had been born: the blood and tears of warring gods. 

Karil spoke to him.

“How went your expedition Bio-Tech Warrior 138/AKY2K/556? Do you bring blood?” the master spoke eagerly with a voice like the sound of metal scraping upon rock.

“Yes, I bring blood for Father Karil and information as you wished.”

“Give up your gift then.” He urged. It stepped forwards and a hole tore itself open in the region of Its stomach, then the blood of his fallen enemies sprayed out into the pool below the masters. The hole resealed itself. The masters hissed in pleasure, It hissed with them.

“Now, tell us this information that you bring.”

“They have returned, the children of The One.”

“So it is true, this is most useful” the warrior felt a swoon of pleasure, his master was pleased!

“That is not all master” he said, eager to please him more.

“I saw the human they call Casian.” If Its simple emotional circuits could have felt surprise, they would have done, for the masters started laughing, the high pitched cackling echoing around the cavern. As it was, he was only programmed with three distinct emotions; blood thirst, hate and dark indulgence.

“Casian…” said the master mulling over the word, he started muttering to himself “… he is still ignorant of what he is…but if it awakens in him…” he spoke clearly again. “Bio-Tech Warrior 138/AKY2K/556 this is your new assignment. Kill Casian.”