The Withered Land, The Empire Falls: ABYSSIUM

ABYSSIUM, Part Thirteen

"This is a truly special place, my friend, though not 'special' in the most common way that word is used," Ambassadorial-Diplomatic Judicial Attache Lel'Kinculnon said as the tread-craft carrier truck neared the wall of the city's outer perimeter. He spoke unhurriedly and in low tones to Centrie Brahnz FieldOps Captain Amaxxe Jo'Amerr and to transplanetary daemon-knight Sergeant-Major Gryce'roy Daamen, frowning, his eyes searching the topmost battlements of the wall looming ahead of the carrier truck in which they'd traveled from Vazyoneulle. "This city is nearly a twelve hundred solar orbital heliars in age and was constructed by hands that did not belong to human beings. Pex'Insava was a very different celestial civilization then, far pre-dating the World-Father and the Hegemonic Emperium, and, in those non-industrialized, non-technological times, the general population of Teshiwahur were thoroughly unaware their moon was populated by civilized intelligent beings."

"How is that?" Sergeant-Major Daamen queried. "What you allude to is that this moon does not truly belong in orbit around Teshiwahur."

"Pex'Insava is the remnant of a mostly shattered celestial body, a product of a catastrophic collision further out past the planet Ourubus Adranto towards the Makkaryenne Elasticity, that was captured and by imprisoned by Teshiwahur's massive gravitational pull, forever locked into orbit around the planet as it drifted an irregular path through the solar system that took it inwards towards our dual suns," the Judicial Attache continued. "Sentient beings other that humankind roamed those spaceways openly in those times, unchallenged by the Emperium's Extraplanetary Star Legion Militia since it did not yet exist. So, yes, I am saying that our moon is not truly our moon --- and we are not its original tenants. When the embryonic antecedents of the Star Legion at last ventured here, this city was already here, already old and tattered, partly crumbling, an abandoned monument to an alien civilization of which we never knew."

The carrier drew even with the easterly southern face of Abyssium and headed towards one of the towering three citadel arches that marked guard-tower bracketed entrances leading inside.

"Kocz-sag mani'Veshtum-Rann," Reihn Valkonurr muttered as she quietly drew up to stand beside the three men. "Those words were inscribed across the face of the keystone in the forward-arch of each entry gate. No one knows the meaning. Translators have tried deciphering the phrase for as long as anyone can remember. Only the Elders of the Shachtferadi'im have even the slightest clue as to their meaning. Supposedly it loosely translates as 'Motherland of the Sunless Paradise'."

"It's far and way larger than I imagined," Amaxxe Jo'Amerr said. "That perimeter wall is at least sixteen stories tall. It stretches in either direction across the horizon as far as the eye can see, even through the perpetual sandstorm that rages around it."

"That's not a sandstorm," Lel'Kinculnon said. "That's the outer wall of a paramagnetic spin-field, a physical wall of energetic force driven into a nuclear fury by something we have yet to understand inside the city. Abyssium is encased in a moving semi-porous barrier of atomic force anchored to the city by an unknown nucleus. The citadel arch gates are the ony places where the storm wall allows the passage of physical matter in or out. Its like they project a dissipation cone that can open and close on command... If anyone or anything tries entering through the storm wall at any other juncture, the spin-field shreds them, it literally tears that which tries to breach the wall apart."

"Really? And who or what commands the passages at the gates?" Daamen asked.

"The Prophet. Or, to put it more accurately, 'He-Who-Sits-Before-the-Eyes-Of-Dreidax Tarathi', the massive statue at the physical center of the city that is more popularly known as The Vulcanodian," Reihn Valkonurr replied, her voice hushed, as if afraid that to name 'The Vulcanodian' in a louder voice was an invitation to summon its wrath.