The Withered Land, The Empire Falls: ABYSSIUM

ABYSSIUM, Part Sixteen

Back on her home continent of Tervaggon in Teshiwahur's southeastern hemisphere and among the vast frost deserts and glaciated tundra that held her seldom spoken-of barbaric roots, Syngemma Krede's foster-father had been one of the highly-honored "Ihmpresaars of Obligation". The Ihmpresaars were a service-oriented police organization of inter-tribal security enforcement whose ranks were filled with staunchly upright, fair-minded officers. Tervaggon, though technologically sophisticated, was a rough, unforgiving land of coarse, wolfish people whose culture had little tolerance for the sociopolitical niceties exhibited by more globally-aware and diplomacy-driven governments elsewhere on the giant planet. As a culture, when they became embroiled in a large and important project, they united and endeavored to move in as straight a line towards the final objective as resources and events would allow. A side result of that hallmark trait was that there weren't very many active Tervaggonite metaphysicians or philosophers. Syngemma was like the average Tervaggonite citizen in most ways, but, as had often been pointed out by both her bewildered parents, she was far more cynical, to their minds, than she had any right to be. No one would ever mistake her for any variety of "crusader". But all of Syngemma's people were carefully tutored in the reasoning and wisdom of their continent's ungoverned, pre-state Battle Sages. And so the warrior woman had grown to be, despite her stubborn individualism, wry pessimism and asocial tendencies, ethically dispassionate. Therefore, these current circumstances in which the tanned, heavily-muscled blonde woman found herself reminded her of her scholastic Strategies & Tactics training at the United Provinces Battle Seminary. What came unbidden to her mind was a quote which inspired her to stay humble while she took up a life lived by the sword.

"There is more to being a warrior than merely attaining victory over an opponent by strength of force. Battle is not a thing of mere mechanics, it is also an art. The art of warfare is to achieve a balance between the horrific science of Bloodletting and the wondrous crusade of protecting Life, and doing both in the name of Justice."

For certain, Syngemma was a harsh pragmatist, a paramilitary mercenary, but she had a moral duty to serve as the good and strong sword-arm of those who could not, for whatever reason, fight for themselves. And this thing, she would do, the cost be damned.

She had never before interacted with any of the Shachtferadi'im Free Men nor with any of the Ahmezygg tribesmen. She kept to herself and mostly to her own kind until she'd entered into partnership with The Blind Watchman, but now, having been exposed to the Shachtferadi'im and Ahmezygg sub-societies, upon briefly witnessing the trevails and their lot in the world, she could be counted as being among their few champions.

Being led into the dim, dusty depths of Essanjor'Nirah, archaeological site for a secret city beneath the bustling, oil-stained streets of Abyssium's industrial-tekk Saurnpei District, confirmed her newly shifted worldview.

Jungmoar'Toth had taken point as the small group had followed the quartet of Ahmezygg tribesmen past the structurally-decaying skeleton of a five story-tall cathedral, its outer walls propped up by a girdle of columnar shafts set at canted angles to keep the cathedral from collapsing into the avenues nearest it, and then onto an expansive, hexagonal stone platform. Once the entirety of the visiting band were on the platform, the seniormost Ahmezygg nomad motioned for everyone to stand in-place while he drew and raised his curved sword, pointing it skyward, whereupon a spark of electrical energy ignited, corruscating from off the blade to strike a raised, half-dome metal nodule a few steps from his feet. The platform emitted a deep groan as ancient hydraulics activated and the platform quaked and rumbled as it lowered below street level. Essanjor'Nirah gradually revealed itself to them as the sky outside fell from sight.

They moved, dappled in flickering light amid patchwork shadows that striped a central torch-lit corridor of immense dimensions, through the open right-hand arch of a triad of pointed-topped lancet arch-doors. Stylized bas-relief carvings of the heads and torsos of what appeared to be kings, queens and nobles from antiquity occupied floor-to-ceiling panels towering over them. The floor of the broad corridor was comprised of rough and uneven oval-shaped panels that were made of interlocked terrapin shells from dead beasts of tremendous size. It was odd that the cast-off petrified carapaces were used as mortared masonry since there were never, so far as anyone living recalled, any such semi-aquatic or amphibious creatures ever in history existing on Pex'Insava.