Wednesday, October 4, 2006

KIDS SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS. . . and WAR OF THE REALMS CH. TWO
'da sikaurai's four year-old daughter is a very winning, yet inarticulate, child. Her communication skills are lacking for her developmental stage. However, as frustrated as sikaurai gets sometimes, she realizes that communication barriers can serve as amusing experiences, sometimes. . .

Her daughter hates having her hair combed. 'da sikaurai has to literally chase the kid around the house and pin her between her knees to get a comb through the beast's blond mop. And yesterday, as 'da kid wriggled in distress as sikaurai held her down, intent on untangling her snarled locks, 'da kid said something pretty funny. . . something that made sikaurai give up in laughter . . .

. . . "IT'S GETTING OFF BECAUSE YOU'RE PULLING IT SO HARD!!!"

*wipes eyes*
Ohhhhh, sikaurai needs a time-out. . .

Anywayyyyyy. . . here's the next chapter in the book:

Miles below the ceiling of the blue and pink planet’s atmosphere, the valley of the Tierbrunh spread its arms across the countryside, cast in shadows against a troubled horizon. The world was in turmoil, even in the land of the Dominion Mother Republic, the watchdog of Azsynthe’s most powerful body of commerce. The Dominion has representatives appointed to the planet’s supreme political power, the Deis Firuge, which consists of the figureheads, high priests and priestesses, and rulers of every powerful nation on Azsynthe. The ancient shelter of the Dominion’s headquarters offered no solace these days to it’s part-time residents. The Deis Firuge, considered to be the planet’s greatest intellectual resource, had direct access to the Mother Council For Intergalactic Unity’s agenda against their world.

A tall, slender figure stood with her arms crossed as she contemplated the transmittal from Azsynthe’s Ground Control. The sight of the space barge’s explosion lit up the corners of the council room as ground control ended it’s satellite feed. The screen went black as the Priestess Sylhnaan turned her back to it, facing a room filled with pale-faced politicians and monarchs, figureheads, priests, and priestesses.

“And so it begins,” she announced calmly. “ The quadrant has turned it’s back on us, and in return we are responsible for another loss due to inaction.” She descended the marble stairs to the room’s sunken core. She lowered herself in her seat, at the head of the table where countless faces drank in her every move, enraptured and terrified.

Sylhnaan is the priestess of Azsynthes’ northeastern territory, the sovereign of Tierbrunh. She is also the first cyborg to take a powerful position in the planet’s political structure. Her organic eye, a brilliant green, surveyed the room with a tiny hint of remorse. “Have we grown so complacent that we can just sit here while thousands—no, millions—die at the hands of the Ancients? Can we sit here like we assume that we will never attract their wrath?”

“I understand your fears,” one man replied, breaking the silence in a sea of white faces. He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him on the table. He stared into her eyes, unwavering. The cyborg priestess looked him over, calmly, contemplating his cleanly pressed suit, his slicked back coif, and his self-important demeanor. She recognized him as the prime minister of one the lesser sovereignties in the southern continent. “I understand your fears,” he repeated slowly, measuring his words. “But our hands are tied at this point. Unlike your entourage and their refusal to cooperate directly with the intergalactic empire, my people have been keeping up to speed on the reports filed by the Cairos.” He frowned as he regarded her, pushing his glasses in place on his nose.

“Um, I know you don’t like to deal with the extraterrestrials, your highness, but the intergalactic council is currently holding the fate of our planet in their hands. They regulate our communications with outside worlds, our interplanetary trade and transit—everything.”

“Really,” Slyhnaan replied dryly. “I am well aware of this.” She offered him a sardonic smile. “Despite my alleged lack of cooperation with them. However, I still believe that we should be able to address our concerns directly to the council. This quarantine that we’ve been placed us on will eventually do more harm than good.” She turned away, waving carelessly at him. “So tell me, prime minister. Give me the latest update on the reports filed by the Cairos.”

The prime minister readjusted his glasses and bent over his lap-sized console, perched perfectly over his knees. “According to the reports filed last week—approved by the Mother Council—the planet Azsynthe is to remain sectioned off from any trade activities. No ships are allowed to enter orbit around the planet, and certainly none are permitted to dock. Any attempts to leave xynthian airspace after announcement of quarantine will be thwarted, by destruction of any departing ship. Also, as an addendum, no ships are permitted to breach airspace. Violation is punishable by destruction of said vessel. No questions asked.”

“Well, we just saw a perfect example of said addendum,” Sylhnaan’s eyes drifted to the hardcopy reports in his possession.

“May I?” she asked softly. The prime minister cleared his throat and nodded brusquely at her, passing them over. She rose and leaned forward. She inspected them, her organic eye narrowing to little more than a slit. “So in other words, any otherwordly visitors already on our planet prior to the quarantine are trapped here until further notice?”

“Everybody. Tourists, traders—perhaps even several smugglers managing to encroach upon docking space. Security has been reinforced doublefold.” He motioned for the priestess to seat herself. She obliged, gracefully gliding into the chair nearest her.
“Then we must address the council.”

“WE must NOT,” the prime minister replied harshly. “If we mind ourselves, and cooperate with their agenda, it may be possible to salvage the whole situation should they choose to reward us for our patience. The Mother Council may see it fit to deliver supplies until the quarantine lifts.”

Sylhnaan’s eye widened and she leaned back, uttering one loud bark of caustic laughter. “Spoken like a true cog on the wheel of bureacracy,” she responded softly, almost kindly, her head tilted to one side as she crossed her long, alloy-clad legs. “The quadrant has us on the bottom of their agenda. Don’t place yourself so highly in their eyes. They have more important issues to tend to than our population, dying in the vastness of some unexplained dementia.” She tapped her long fingers against the console, as she stroked her chin thoughtfully, distractedly. The priestess Sylhnaan had always been prone to distraction. So many things on her mind, these days.

“They will send their scientists, when they deem it safe to venture here. They will intervene when millions of us have already been lost, when the last of our political hierarchy has been obliterated due to mutiny and uprising, and rightly so. Our people want action now. People worldwide are dying. Some third-world communities have already disappeared, en masse. And here we sit, in our marble tower watching while our world dies at the hands of the ancients.”

The prime minister snorted. “The ‘ancients’ again. You don’t know that. We don’t know what’s causing this. Maybe we should wait for the Master Counsel’s intervention before we make up theories as to what’s really killing off our planet. It could be some contaminant in the oceans, or a combination of scientific reasons.”

The soft smile faded from Sylhnaan’s face and her eye narrowed. She rose from her seat and leaned over the table. The other members of the meeting shrank away, if only imperceptibly, maybe even unconsciously. The high priestess of the Dominion Republic was a force to behold.

She was the most enigmatic of the planetary figureheads. Despite her technological enhancements and resulting deformity, she still possessed a shadow of her former beauty. Her long, cinnamon-colored hair was wrapped high above her feathered headdress, and her lips were full and luscious. The right half of her face was shielded behind a brushed steel mask, and her bionic eye glowed red and impersonal, an almost obscene comparison to her brilliantly green left eye. Tracks of wiring and circuitry coursed paths across her torso, embedded in roads of plastic and alloy. Her limbs were freakishly long, yet she moved with the grace of a gazelle. She was painful to look at, and yet the prime minister’s gaze was unwavering as he attempted to stare her down. She leaned closer to him, sneering.

“Yes, you are people of science and reasoning. But where does your science come in when an entire world is befouled, falling prey to death in their sleep? Have you had the dreams, yet, Bankutsu? Have you seen the demons’ faces in your nightmares, yet? Or have they not yet come for you? Because eventually they will notice you too, Bankutsu. And when they do, your science will not save you. AS the leader of your society, it would do you good to seek salvation within the chronicles of the Kai’ash.”

“Garbage, Sylhnaan,” Bankutsu snarled. “Your old-world witchcraft stories don’t hold any water in politics. We’re talking real-life here, not fantasies. I don’t want to hear any more of these camp-fire stories of yours.”

Another member of the counsel, sitting at the prime minister’s right, suddenly snapped to attention at the sound of Bankutsu’s protest. She was a heavier set, dark-skinned woman, with gray hair pulled back across her head in dreaded braids. She was adorned in the robes of a Tierbrunn minister, and held the air of importance about her. She waved Bankutsu aside, and leaned forward, meeting Sylhnaan’s gaze with her intelligently dark eyes. “What is the Kai’ash?”

Sylhnaan straightened up, and the spark deserted her eye. “The Kai’ash is the ancient book, the chronicles of an old religion. The chronicles are darkly toned, somber, and uncompromising. The verses speak not of gentle saviors, or benevolent deities. Instead, the old religion focuses on a god-like creature—one whom has arisen from the dead of another dimension. It is Kyonei, an omnipotent beast, neither male nor female, resurrected every several millennia to pass judgment upon mortalkind.”

The minister’s neighbor nodded his head. He was a firm-jawed, older man of some infamy in his homeland. “Yes, I also have heard of Kyonei. Some of the older sovereignties on my continent still have temples dedicated to worshipping It. It is said that Kyonei’s guises are volcanic and tempestuous; It’s motives behind the repeated visitations into the surmised Holy Lands remain controversial among our theologists; the final verses of the Kai’ash are not promising ones. “

The minister made a face. “So you think that this is it? This is Judgment time?”

Sylhnaan whirled away from the table, pacing thoughtfully. The older woman contemplated the sight of the cyborg; her history was questionable. Not even her closest, oldest employees could say for sure what circumstances led her to lose her previous identity. Rumors circulated among the Deis Firuge that a horrible accident had left her completely incapacitated; others whispered that her bionic visage was the result of a whim of insanity. No one would ever voice their curiosity to the priestess herself. The minister was no different, yet she found that a deep-rooted respect of the ruling cyborg had left her fascinated with Sylhnaan.

Sylhnaan’s words came out slowly, distractedly as she paced the floor, talking more to herself than to the consulate. “No, not Kyonei. This planet-wide mayhem, this mass destruction with no obvious motive, is not It’s way. However, the cause of the planet’s torment can be interpreted in the ancient verses. It is said that Kyonei, long ago—before the creation of mortalkind—invaded the space ordained to have belonged to collective of other space-traveling beings. They were malevolent spirits, wandering aimlessly throughout the vacuum of their spatial boundaries. It is said that Kyonei battled ruthlessly for their territory, and ousted them from its borders. It created a celestial body in the path of an orange star, and throughout the following eons, molded it into a life-wielding planet. Kyonei guarded It’s new toy jealously against invaders, while breathing life onto the planet’s surface.”

Slylhnaan stopped pacing. “The former tenants of this corner of the galaxy may have come back to claim what was once theirs. But in order to have done this, they would have needed a portal into this plane of reality. The one that houses our Azsynth.”

Bankutsu offered a bark of caustic glee. “Are you for real?”

Sylhnaan ignored him. “Think about this, then,” she offered the consulate, ponderously. “Think of the bind we are in. Let me explain it to you in your terms: due to this mass sickness befouling our beautiful world, whole citadels are falling prey to death in their sleep. So as a result, vivid and paralytic nightmares are leaving us –a great percentage of our masses—deranged or delusional. Then, suddenly, a great percentage of sovereign citizens are maimed and mutilated with no tagged suspects for the heinous crimes. Our scientists have already determined that for each murder committed, the victim had had violent dreams for several consecutive nights before their violent deaths. Our people are scared, Bankutsu, and yet, we sit here in our ivory towers, doing nothing.”

She turned on the council, her expression unreadable. “Loudly, impassioned, our people have sought help from us. Our hands are tied, so to speak. To compound our troubles, the Mother Council for Intergalactic Unity has placed an airspace quarantine on Azsynthe, cutting us off from intergalactic trade, commerce, and tourism. No ship can penetrate orbital airspace surrounding us; no extraplanetary vessels are permitted to breach our atmospheric parameters—and no one from the planet’s surface is permitted to leave orbital airspace. Due to the growing dementia and the alarming percentage of unsolved murders spreading within our sovereignties, I can understand the Mother Council’s desire to keep the heat from spreading to other planets. BUT. . . we still need supplies from other worlds—our trade prestige is now damaged beyond any chance of repair. Thousands of offworlders are literally being held hostage by the Mother Council’s decision to eradicate our consideration in intraquadrant transit, and these same visitors to our world are now clamoring for their rights to be released to their own worlds, and to be returned to their friend, their relatives, their loved ones. There is literally no escape, for us, for them. The Cairos Quadrant has even gone so far as to post Mother Council’s military platoons to police our planetary parameters. Do you understand the implications? And you still wish to leave your future in their hands?”

A wispy-haired gentleman toward the end of the table nodded his head. “This whole thing is a public-relations nightmare.”

“Exactly,” Sylhnaan pointed her finger toward the council members as she glided past them,

“That is it exactly, my friends. And so now, with nowhere else to turn, consider this. A handful of people in my employ, my most dedicated and loyal workers, come back to me with rumors. They tell me that they have discovered the whereabouts of this portal. It exists on this planet now. And it is in the guise of a mortal girl. She must be found. She must be neutralized.”

The cyborg priestess raised her arm to the sky in conviction and her gaze burned in both triumph and urgency.

“And she knows not what she is.”


Comments (8)