The Primeval Era-Chapter 152: Detour II
Sir Alex settled back on his throne of bone and scale, those star-filled eyes fixed on the western horizon. Whatever lay in that direction, it would either prove useful or it would be destroyed. Those were the only outcomes he permitted.
The journey continued.
Empty Dross tribes fell behind them, and ahead lay more of the same. Sir Alex watched with idle cruelty as his forces encountered the remnants of tribes that had tried to flee the Primal Surge. Bodies lay where they had fallen, men and women and children who had simply been too slow to escape the stampede of beasts days ago.
His Warriors showed no respect for the dead.
Commands rang out across the formation, and Velociraptors were directed to move over corpses rather than around them. Bones cracked beneath clawed feet. Flesh that had begun to decay was ground into the soil. What had once been people became stains upon the earth, indistinguishable from the dirt they had spent their worthless lives farming.
Sir Alex found the display appropriate.
This was what Dross were worth. This was how the strong treated the weak. Any pretense of dignity in death was a luxury the powerless could not afford. They existed to serve, and when they could no longer serve, they existed to be forgotten.
The army pressed on.
Another tribe or two. More corpses. More evidence of lives interrupted by forces that cared nothing for their struggles or hopes. The Threshold Lands were painted in death, and Sir Alex’s forces added to the canvas with every mile they traveled.
And then the horizon changed.
It started as a shimmer, a distortion in the air that suggested heat rising from the ground. But the morning was cool, and heat mirages didn’t produce the colors he was beginning to see. Greens where brown should dominate. Blues where grey should reign. Patterns that spoke of growth and life in territories defined by their absence of both.
Sir Alex leaned forward on his throne.
His nine-pointed pupils widened as the Mana density ahead registered against his senses. The scout had been right. The concentration exceeded anything the Threshold Lands should possess. It exceeded anything he had sensed in their Sacred Mountains. It approached levels that belonged to the cores of the greatest peaks, where power had accumulated across ages beyond counting!
Miles away, radiant outlines of greenery resolved into impossible detail.
Trees rose in profusion, their leaves catching morning light and scattering it into colors that didn’t belong to natural vegetation. Massive shapes dominated the horizon, trunks wider than buildings climbing toward canopies lost in clouds that glowed with faint blue light. The landscape itself seemed to pulse with energy, rhythm and purpose underlying every visible feature.
Around him, his Imperators were staring with expressions of disbelief.
The army had slowed without commands, Velociraptors and riders alike pausing as they sensed what lay ahead. The crimson tide that had been flowing with such purpose now pooled in confusion, thousands of Warriors confronting something their understanding could not accommodate.
Sir Alex’s eerily beautiful features twisted into something between fascination and fury.
"What the hell is that?"
His voice emerged soft, dangerous, filled with the promise of violence against whatever had dared to create something so unexpected in territories he had dismissed as worthless.
The oasis stretched before them, miles upon miles of impossible paradise where barren stone had stood mere days ago.
And Sir Alex wanted fucking answers!
---
Damian observed The Cradle of First Flames from his vantage point above.
His consciousness floated within clouds that stretched more than twenty miles across, perception expanded to encompass everything beneath that burning blue canopy. He could see the tribesmen moving through the transformed landscape, thousands of newly awakened Warriors harvesting fruits and gathering produce with wonder still fresh on their faces. He could see Uncle Adam directing work parties with military efficiency. He could see Grandmother Essun cackling as she supervised the younger workers with her sharp tongue and sharper eyes, since he evaded her questions.
The garden was coming alive with activity and purpose.
And then his attention shifted to the periphery as he sensed something.
Something was approaching from the east.
His cloud-expanded senses detected it before his eyes could resolve details, a massive concentration of Mana moving across the barren Threshold Lands toward the edges of his domain. The signature was wrong somehow, tainted with something that made his essence recoil instinctively. Crimson undertones pulsed beneath the surface of that approaching power.
He focused his perception, drawing his awareness toward that distant disturbance.
An army resolved into clarity.
Thousands of figures moved in formation across the desolate terrain, Velociraptors carrying Warriors in crimson armor that gleamed with contained destruction. The beasts’ eyes glowed with that same crimson light, awareness suppressed by runes carved into their flesh!
Above them flew a creature that dwarfed everything else, a Pteranodon stretching a mile from beak to tail, its body wrapped in binding inscriptions. Smaller, similar flying beasts circled around it.
And upon that massive beast sat figures whose Mana signatures burned at Vessel Completion and beyond.
Damian’s attention fixed on one figure in particular.
A man sat upon a throne fashioned from the Pteranodon’s spine, his posture radiating the arrogance of someone who expected the world to bend before him. Simple crimson robes covered a physique that pulsed with barely contained power. And his eyes, those nine-pointed stars containing multitudes, swept across the horizon with predatory interest.
Recognition struck Damian as he looked out incredulously.
That was...
Alex Theovaun! Captain Alex Theovaun!
...!
Damian knew that face. He knew those star-filled pupils. He knew the way that man carried himself, the tilt of his head, the set of his shoulders. He had seen those features countless times during his childhood, had watched that man kneel before his father and swear oaths of eternal loyalty!
Alex had been one of the Twelve Vakochev Royal Captains!
The elite Warriors who served directly under Emperor Vakochev, who commanded the empire’s legions, who had sworn blood oaths to protect the Vakochev Lineage until their dying breaths. They had been the pillars upon which his father’s power rested. They had been trusted above all others.
And they...these fuckers...had betrayed everything!
Damian’s clouds began to darken.
Blue thunder crackled through vapor that had been serene moments ago, energy responding to emotions he couldn’t contain. The gentle rain still falling on the Cradle of First Flames intensified, droplets growing heavier as the storm building within him manifested in the sky above.
Why?
The question burned through his mind with fury that made his beast form on the mountain below lift its massive head and roar.
Why did these fuckers who had betrayed and destroyed everything he left back then not leave him alone? His parents were dead. His empire was ash. His childhood had been stolen and replaced with eight years of hiding and surviving in territories so remote that he had dared to hope he might be forgotten.
But here they were.
An army of thousands advancing toward his home. Imperators that seemed both foreign and familiar flying in formation around a traitor who wore his father’s trust like a stolen crown. Captain Alex, who had probably smiled while the Vakochev bloodline burned, was now approaching the Cradle of First Flames with forces that could flatten everything Damian had built. Did they track this area as where the ones who killed Vienna were? But even so...
Did they think him weak?
Did they think he would not fight?
His clouds churned with violence barely restrained, blue lightning arcing between formations of vapor that were becoming something closer to a weapon than weather. The tribesmen below looked up with concern as the sky darkened, their harvesting slowing as they sensed the change in atmosphere.
Damian felt his fury crystallize into something cold and sharp.
They had come to his domain uninvited. They had brought an army to his doorstep!
They had dared to approach the place where he had given refuge to thousands, where he had created a garden from barren stone, where people who had lost everything were just beginning to hope again!
Fine.
Fine!
FINE!
If Sir Alex wanted to find what had killed Imperator Vienna and destroyed the demon within her corpse, he could have his answer.
Damian would give it to him personally!
His power. His Doctrines! In Lands without honor, he wanted to see if his Doctrines...could define and carve out his own. And today, he wanted it to be Honor of Blood as those who betrayed their oaths had to be reminded. Even if they forgot, he remembered.
He...remembered.
