The Withered Land, The Empire Falls: ABYSSIUM

ABYSSIUM, Part Eight

Pex'Insava's atmosphere was predominantly generated by the sixty kilometer-long mountain range dominating the moon's brutal glacial polar zone, where "Faryn'galf Agonnis", which translated loosely to mean "the Wolf's Fangs", a nine and a half kilometer-tall semi-pyramidal peak, rose heavenward. There were no actual wolves, not as they were known to exist on far distant planet Earth, on Pex'Insava, but there did exist dog-like, feral pack animals called "Jengilexae" roaming the icy hills and tundra. Six-legged and part-mammal and part-reptile, they were foremost among the few native higher, non-human lifeforms abroad the large, flatish moon. They often followed the winds along Pex'Insava's atmospheric storm corridor. Yanked down to the moon's surface by gravity, solar winds from the planetary system's dual suns created hurricane force gales that scoured the expansive blue-white ice fields, rushing across the lunar landscape down into the more temperate, human-populated regions as the electromagnetic solar plasma rushed along the lines of Pex'Insava's unusually strong magnetosphere.

Some days, during the winter months at the borders of the polar zone, a person could hear the winds. They sounded like the melancholy, doleful baying of a thousand wolves, like feral lost souls in savage worship to a beast-god destined to never answer their prayers. Oftentimes, the echoes of that wailing would ride the winds, permeating into the moon's surface interior territories as far as Port Breqhamwurth at the shores of the Oceanic Zone.

The few days and nights when that would occur, the howling created a dire music that pierced the soul and blackened the hearts of those who listened, birthing monsters in the minds of men.

This day was one of those days. Turbulent blasts of frigid air, warming slowly from the reflected heat of the arid sandy regions beyond the icefields, galloped a twisting, tortuous path down from Faryn'galf Agonnis towards the towering steel and glass pagodas of the gated city of Kithpell Manus.

Lord Eragoze Hehlgrummyte squinted his eyes shut and ground his teeth while he heard that dismal, unmelodious howling. He drew a deep breath into his broad chest and held it for a moment before he banished the feeling of dread it inspired within him.

He had left his Master Mage, Kazzime Joxx, in command of the Whyrligaegem at the Baronial Compound housing his Astromancer's Complex. Joxx's Fae-Spawn Sentinel, the tattooed giant named Anthus Rhoggym, was acting as his temporary Chief of Security. Hehlgrummyte hadn't wanted to do that, but he'd been left with little choice, especially since he hadn't wanted the freakish Qrypfathenne Psyonikant, Orakun Maadregul, peering too closely into his affairs upon her revisit to the Baronial Compound --- something guaranteed to happen while he was away.

It had been a while since Lord Hehlgrummyte had been directly involved in any dealings with Pex'Insava's political powerbrokers, but he remembered enough to know there were certain realities that did not change. And the first of those was: never, ever trust a Qrypfathenne.

Across from Hehlgrummyte's voluminously large, high-backed Envoy's chair, facing him inside the roomy passenger cabin of the ornately decorated MagLev hover-coach in which he and his coterie rode, his bodyguards, Esteffyah and Xylander, watched him worriedly.

His voice a low-pitched, soft croak, Hehlgrummyte spoke in a disaffected and distracted manner, addressing his remarks to no one and yet everyone. "Do you hear that, just under the hum of the engines, can you hear it? That hollow, moaning keen, that wail, it always takes me back to those times before my exile, before my life as an Astromancer, back to when I was far more brutish and far more arrogant. Back to when I thought nothing in life was more important than the rapid and decisive accumulation of power... Do you hear it, that sound?"

The two heavily armed protective escorts said nothing. They knew Hehlgrummyte's question to be little more than the product of moot musings. They had become accustomed to Hehlgrummyte's habit of sharing random thoughts and musings aloud. It was his way of processing his inner tensions and misgivings. Besides, neither of the bodyguards was possessed of anything resembling a philosophically reflective nature.