Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

The Janus Maker

The souls of the damned, provided a blazing amber light as they funneled down from a burning, fiery sky turning into a sharp vortex that plunged like a spear into the maw of the obsidian spire.

The necrotorium huffed and churned, like a man taking long, desperate drags on a half done cigarette, breath coming in long fiery gasps. Deep below the earth, the ground rumbled and churned with an ever present tremor. Distant screams echoed faintly on the wind as the incoming flood of souls were pressed, burned, tortured and torn, juiced like lemons to extract the sweet power that existed at their core.

The obsidian courtyard flickered with the light of the damned, and the slow sweeping crinoline of darkness.

At the head of it all, General Kazna sat swathed in a gown of blackness and armored in dark, sinister steel. The trident she held towered nearly sixteen feet into the air, its obsidian black edges glittering with a hungry edge, like the saliva that drips from a hellhound's teeth. Her molten gold eyes burned from the depth of her shadowed helm, as she cast her eyes over her subjects.

This was not the fertile belt of Anin, not the blazing miles of moss under Chal or the burning ash of the dark season, but it was the empire she had made with her own steel.

Before her, the obsidian floor crawled with her waiting subjects, creatures and things swathed in sheets of darkness, and halo's of sickly orange light. They were aliens, humans and Tesraki, and Drev, but also corrupted Makers, their dim golden aura splotchy and flickering disconnected from the light of their beloved Revelation. Everette stood at her side, his body awash with flickering golden light dimming towards orange at the edges, more a patchwork than solid halo.

It had taken him a while to recover from being blown apart by Vir and his people, and still the Maker wasn't quite at full power, not that that had been much to shake a stick at to begin with. His Anima had been weak on the back of his death, gone mad and turned towards cannibalism in his last days.

To be honest, there really wasn't much to work with.

She had originally hoped to replace Everette with Emperor Celex, but the wily bastard had been stronger than she anticipated. She had assumed, with what she knew about him, his past as a Maker and his present as a warlord that he would be easy to turn, but instead he had given up his bid for power and cast his lots in with the wrong side.

It seemed as if her efforts to break him, had robbed him of his fire , his hunger for power.

It was a real pity. She could certainly have used him for greater things.

Kazna tapped her fingers on the edge of her glass throne and brooded softly.

There was little true power in this room, but plenty of greed. A lot of little people making themselves out to be bigger than they were. The strongest things here lurked in the shadows, hunkered in the dark corners and watched from above, indescribable and unknowing.

But there was something else emanating from the shadows. At first she didn't notice its presence over the cold aura of darkness that seemed to permeate the room around her, but as she sat the more she became aware of another presence, a powerful presence lurking in the darkness just behind her and over her right shoulder. Finally, managing to attribute the feeling to a location, she could feel it with more power now, like a warm halo of light cast from the sun or a gently crackling fire pit. The sensation was surprisingly pleasant, like the gentle wash of waves in a warm sea, contemptuously powerful.

Kazna straightened her back with something approaching concern, but refused to show it as she relaxed languidly against the dark glass, "I do not allow just anyone to lurk in my shadow."