“It will be done, Eldest.” Tekritimaki said as she bowed deeply, but as she straightened, she continued to do no more than stare.
“Is there something else?” Quewanak inquired.
“Your pardon. Eldest. It is just that it occurs to me that if I bring this to my Lord’s attention, and it is subsequently discovered that you are an impostor, he will give me an eternity of pain for my error. But it is difficult to discern the truth of the matter from your astral projection as viewed through an Illusion.”
“I understand. And I declare by the soul of holy Amirgath himself that I am indeed Quewanak the Eldest, and that I am indeed alive in body and mind, though I choose to communicate through this astral projection at this time.
“Besides that, I have Somonik here to vouch for my identity, and you can easily confirm his identity by conventional means, and we all know that he would no more lie about such a thing than turn into a tree.”
Tekritimaki glanced over at Somonik, back to the Eldest, bowed in what Ria judged to be an almost groveling manner, said; ‘Thank you.’ and vanished.
Somonik clacked his claws, and there was sudden silence as the sounds of the sea, the wind, and the creaking of rigging abruptly ceased.
“Well done.” Somonik said as he turned to Quewanak, and he actually grinned. “And you were right; your old enemy is behind everything again.”
“We have to avoid thinking of him as the Eldest’s old enemy, or we’ll just end up making him our new enemy, and we still don’t have anything that proves he’s responsible for the actions of the conspiracy!” Mark determinedly stated.
“If you choose to think so, but cattle do not become cats.” Quewanak insisted. “Darkest has obviously changed a great deal, but it is becoming clear to me that he is really no better for it.
“Still, you are correct in that we must be careful to be civil with him, so long as a realistic chance of ensuring peace exists.
“If he comes, he will be quick about it. Be ready.”
They waited for less than another minute, then a similar window Illusion appeared hundreds of meters above the Serminaki flagship. Somonik raised his own window to be level with it, and those on the ships below were left out of the conversation.
The illusory window they faced across sixty meters of open air and the shimmer of the Boundary was only slightly larger than the one they looked out of, but within it was the biggest room any there had ever seen. Judging by some barely visible Sylvan hurrying along the far wall, it was most of a kilometer in diameter. It appeared to have been constructed in a crater or volcanic bowl, and then roofed over with an artfully ribbed steel dome, or perhaps it was a cavern formed by an underground sea of oil or water that had been drained and re-enforced. Almost everything in it was black or red stone, and illumination was provided by huge fireballs over ten meters in diameter that burned with no visible support or fuel supply thirty meters above the floor, spaced fifty meters apart.
After a sufficient moment to allow the mood and monumental nature of that view to fully register, a dragon gradually appeared within it, fading into view just far enough from the viewpoint to be completely visible, almost filling the window. Mark couldn’t help thinking that this was the most striking dragon he’d ever seen; black with gold and silver accents, almost too muscular to be sinuous, but not quite. Each large black scale had a thin band of silver at it’s edge, his claws were gold, as were his eyes, his eyebrow ridges, and his sharp teeth, and the bones of his wings were outlined in gold as well. He had a prominent row of dorsal spines that ran from the top of his head to the tip of his tail, and two large, curved horns over his eyebrow ridges, all tipped in silver.
He was holding a small copper dragon around the base of its neck with one hand, his grip unshakable with the tips of his claws dug in a bit. He held the copper drake high above the floor, and when it struggled a bit and flapped its wings, he casually gave it a violent shake to take the fight out of it.
Then things snapped into perspective as Mark realized that the comparatively small copper dragon was First Flame Tekritimaki, who was the size of Kragorram; at least sixty meters from her nose to the tip of her tail.
“Sweet mother of all!” Mark marveled to Talia over their Link. “He must be a hundred and eighty meters in length! Ninety meters high as he sits there!”
Talia only squeezed his hand in response.
There was no conversation initially, as each side took the other’s measure.
Somewhat surprisingly, it was Grakonexikaldoron who broke the silence from her place at the rear of the delegation. “That aura! Zarkog?!! Is that you?!! You’re the Dragon Lord of Serminak?!!!”
“Grakonexikaldoron.” The Dragon Lord nodded. “Yes, it is I, and I do hold that position. Are you well?”
His voice was incredible, and was almost like two voices. It was a smooth and deep baritone, duplicated a full octave lower by a quaking rumble of awesome resonance and power. Mark felt exactly what people meant when they said his voice made their bones vibrate and their chests feel funny.
As he thought this, Gran was replying. “I am quite well, thank you, and you?”
“I am quite well also.”
“This person is your friend?” Somonik carefully asked.
“We have Spoken occasionally on the subject of astronomy, usually it’s more esoteric and theoretical aspects.” The gold dragon replied. “I only know Zarkog as a shining intellect and an fascinating conversationalist. Certainly one of the most pre-eminent of astronomers for the last several million years, but reclusive, and not prone to a great deal of communication. He has not contacted me for some six thousand years, so I knew he was working on something important. The only visual contact we had was the sharing of sky-scapes. I did not know he was as big as a mountain!
“Truly Zarkog, you present an astounding and handsome figure!”
“I do try to take care of myself.” Zarkog smiled, and turned to the Eldest, scrutinizing him for a moment.
“Quewanak? Is that truly you?”
“It is.” The eldest nodded. “You are he who was known as The Darkest Black some forty-one million years ago?”
“I am.” Zarkog nodded thoughtfully. “Tell me, how’s your head?”
“It still gives me a twinge, every now and then. How’s your neck?”
“It’s fine now, but it was a hard recovery. One vertebra higher, and I’d have died in moments. I cannot guess how you survived! I saw your brain exposed!”
“As you say, it was a hard recovery. I take it you missed the crevasse?”
“I did not. I jammed at the bottom in an awkward position, completely paralyzed.”
The Dragon Lord paused a moment, then shook his head in wonder. “By the gods, you truly are you!”
“And you’re you. Now that we’ve established that, perhaps you could cease asphyxiating your First Flame before she expires.”
“Oh? Right, of course.” Zarkog said as he set Tekritimaki down and casually Healed her.
“That will be all for now.” he told her as she rose to her feet, a trifle unsteadily. “Return to your duties. Take your choice of prey and mates tonight, and take tomorrow off.”
“If I may truly have my choice of mates, I will await you in your quarters, that I may serve you further, my Lord.” Tekritimaki respectfully told him as she bowed to the floor.
“You may.” he replied, and she assembled what dignity she could and took her leave, while he turned back to Quewanak.
“I lay in that crevasse for three years, you know, before I could heal myself enough to move. Starving, drinking rainwater when it fell, and occasionally almost drowning in it, unable to sleep from the pain. I had a great deal of time to think.
“I realized that you had sacrificed yourself. You were the Eldest, the pact had not yet been passed, all the power in the world was yours. You did not have to answer my challenge, you were well within your rights to order any and all to slay me instead. Some would have sneered, but they would have been few, since it was generally recognized that you could not defeat me. Yet you accepted my challenge. And as I replayed our battle in my mind, again and again, I saw that you knew that you would not survive, that you accepted your death so that you could kill me, for only in that way could you be sure that the pact would be passed. In order to give up your own rights to rule unquestioned and to hunt horn-horses, you sacrificed your life.
“Again and again I silently railed at the stupidity of it, and I could not understand why you would do such a futile and self-destructive thing! But finally, as I groped for understanding, I saw the value of altruism, and I was humbled.
“When I was capable of cautiously checking the state of the world to see if you had died, I learned that it was assumed that we both had. And with both of us thought dead, any could say what they truly thought of the two of us, without fear of retribution, or benefit of reward. And you were ennobled as a hero, having given your life in the greatest act of bravery, honor, and self-sacrifice the world had seen to that time. I was reviled, my title used as a curse, and a label for those who were selfish villains, and a joke. Where is the darkest black? In the lair of the dead! Haw haw haw.
“In the crevasse I had been trapped with one eye pressed against the stone. With the other I could see only the unchanging stone walls of the crevasse, and a slice of sky. Denied any meaningful touch or feeling, or taste or scent or sound, the sight of that slice of sky was the only physical experience I had to keep me sane.
“I grew to love the sight of the stars, and wondered which of them were circled by other worlds, and which of those had life, and people, and astronomers, and whether one of those was looking at me across the unknowably vast void, seeing me trapped in the crevasse but too distant to assist me.
“When I regained my health, I turned away from the world, turned away from my grandiose plans and schemes. I took back my name and my natural light blue coloring, and dedicated myself to astronomy and the search for other life among the stars. It has occupied my nights for the last forty million years.
“I dedicated my days to improving my ability as a fighter and as a spellcaster. Having had one agonizing, terrifying, and soul-crushing defeat, I was determined that I would never risk suffering such an experience again. It was many eons later, when I knew myself to be many times more dangerous than any mortal being had ever been, that I finally began to feel safe again.
“And I found what I was seeking all that time, just less than five millennia ago! I learned to cast lenses from magic itself, vast circular spells out in the void past the moons, bending light to my eyes! First I learned to find worlds around the closer stars, and then to see if they had air and water and land, and then to see if they had cities with artificial lights glowing on their dark sides! And among the billions of stars there are billions of worlds, and tens of thousands of them have life as we know it! I have confirmed the existence of at least nine hundred and twenty-one worlds bearing intelligent life!”
“I must congratulate you on your achievement.” Quewanak nodded. “And having found life on other worlds, what led to your decisions to re-color yourself so dramatically, and to become the Dragon Lord of Serminak?”
“Ah. To reveal that, I must ask that what I am about to tell you be kept among you. This is dangerous knowledge, and not something that we want widely known by your people or mine.”
“This is a public gathering, Zarkog. We are responsible to our peoples for the truth.”
“Then tell your people the truth if you so choose, but first let me tell you what I know privately. Once you’ve heard what I will say, you will not choose to announce it to your citizenry, I am certain of that.”
“That is fair.” Somonik stated. “Let all who are not monarchs, councilors of nations, or senior commanders clear the room.”
When the service staff and advisors had left, Somonik cast a spell that sealed the hall.
“You still have all manner of small folk there. Far too many to keep such a secret.” Zarkog opined.
“This will have to do, since every one of these folk have as much standing here as myself or the Eldest.”
“Most have more standing than I, actually.” Quewanak snickered.
“Foolishness.” Zarkog stated dismissively. “At any rate, know that of the worlds with intelligent life that I have found, some are capable of feats that are far beyond us. I first became aware of this when I found a star circled by more than three hundred worlds and moons, and eleven have so much artificial light showing on their night sides, that their entire surfaces must be covered in cities. They are most certainly able to travel from one of their worlds to another. The possibility that so many civilizations developed and exist in isolation within the same planetary system can be considered to be zero.
“Some time after that, I spent some three hundred years watching a moon with a diameter of some three thousand nine hundred kilometers being moved. It left its orbit around a giant outer world, and took up an orbit much closer to its star. The orbital forces of it were obviously carefully planned, since it was done in a manner that caused almost no disturbance in the other worlds and moons that orbited that star. But no other sign of life was visible around that star.
“Then I found another well-lighted world, sailing through the void from one star to another at impossible speed.
“These filled me with a fear that will never leave me. The energies involved make everything we have ever achieved in spell casting or engineering seem as a puff of breath compared to a typhoon.
“I knew I needed to learn whether any of these distant peoples could ever become a threat to us. I believe that I have reached the theoretical limits of the ability to focus light. We will never be able to focus our vision so finely as to be able to observe the actions of individuals on other worlds.
“So, I took my search in other directions, and I developed the Psionic Distant Listener. I constructed it as a device, since there are so many spells involved that even I could not keep them all in mind. I poured my power into it for one hundred and ninety-one years before I detected the first vague images and thoughts from the distant void. Soon I found more and more, but when I looked in the directions I detected the thoughts coming from, I could see no corresponding worlds. Nor could I detect any thoughts from the inhabited worlds I had seen. I could only assume then that the civilizations that produce the most light are not the ones that have the most total psionic ability.
“At first it was completely indecipherable, but I gradually became able to make some sense of what I was receiving. I receive the psionic output of an entire world at once, and only the most commonly repeated patterns are distinguishable after a great deal of careful study. The thoughts and languages of it are in every case so alien as to be untranslatable, but the sights and sounds of it have been absolutely enlightening.
“I detected discernible thought from twenty-seven distant civilizations scattered about the sky. The more alike they are to us, the more of their thoughts can be discerned.
“Let me show you something.” Zarkog cast a quick Illusion. “This is a fish.” He erased it and cast another. “This creature is almost identical in appearance, and while it also looks like a fish, it is in fact a reptile. This one looks like a fish, but is an insect. And this one also shares the same look, though it is a mammal. They all have the same shape, because it is the most efficient shape for a creature that spends its life swimming in water. Form follows function.
“I have found that there are creatures and peoples on other worlds who are superficially similar to dragons, and to other creatures and peoples on our world. Form follows function. And there are people who are so different from anything here as to be indescribable.
“But I found no reason to believe that any other world’s peoples could affect us in any way without millions of years of very determined effort. The void is simply too vast, so vast it is incomprehensible; there are no numbers large enough to describe the extent of it. Even the world that moves between stars at impossible speed could not reach us for four hundred million years, and it is not moving toward us. I almost began to feel safe again.
“And then I began to systematically scan every direction outward from Kellaran for thoughts that came from places that were relatively close. Even though I had detected no signs of life around the closest thousand stars when I had looked in visual light, I decided that it was worth checking the vicinity again with the Psionic Distant Listener.
“What I have discovered is as dire as anything I had imagined. Let me illustrate what I have found.
“This has to do with the Nexus!” Tithian urgently and privately told those around her.
Zarkog turned and cast an astronomical Illusion on the black floor behind him as the fires overhead dimmed to a fraction of their output.
“Here is our star, and here is Kellaran with its three moons, and the circle that marks our yearly path around our star. Kellaran is the fourth world out from the sun, and these are the three closer worlds, all smaller, lifeless, and without moons. And as you can see, there are two more worlds that are smaller than ours and more distant, the farther one circled by a single moon. These six can be considered to be our star’s inner worlds, for they are distinct from the outer worlds by size, composition, and distance.
“It is interesting to note that of all the life-bearing worlds I have detected, Kellaran is the second largest. And so far as I have been able to detect psionicly, ours is the only world inhabited by more than one intelligent race. Those two facts are likely related.
“We move our viewpoint much farther back, and now you can see our star’s eight outer worlds, all many times larger than Kellaran, all having many moons, all almost certainly lifeless. We move back again, much farther than that.”
The circles marking the worlds’ paths around the star shrank until the largest was barely visible, and then the dozen closest stars moved in at the edges of the Illusion’s area.
“This is it!” Tithian panted in excitement. “What he is about to reveal concerns the core matters of the nexus, I can feel it!”
“Two hundred and seventy-six years ago I made a shocking discovery. I detected very strong psionic emanations coming from this direction, and half a year later I was able to triangulate the distance.” Zarkog said as a spot glowed one-third as distant from Kellaran’s star as it’s nearest neighbor. “Three years later I was able to plot the direction and speed of the psionic source’s movement. It is moving directly toward us. I realized that it would be able to arrive here at a time that is now only six more years in the future.”
“I considered carefully what this could mean, and realized that steps needed to be taken to defend Kellaran against possible invaders from the void.” Zarkog continued. “I looked about, and realized that the races of our world were hopelessly divided, undisciplined, and self-concerned. I decided that it was my responsibility to prepare for the defense of this world. The Sylvan and dragons of Serminak seemed like they would be the most difficult to organize, yet had the greatest military potential, so I started here. I took a bit of time to design a suitable social structure and a system of administration, and then I became The Dragon Lord of Serminak. This appearance was chosen to inspire my forces, and can be considered the uniform of the post. Since that time I have been building our military capability.
“Then, one hundred and eighty-seven years ago, I made my most incredible and dire discovery thus far. I discovered another source of psionic emanation, here.”
A point was marked a third of the way around Kellaran’s star from the first one, higher as well, and further away, being half as distant as the next nearest star.
“It is also approaching us, and at a much higher speed than the other, though it is losing speed more rapidly as well. It will be able to reach Kellaran in eight and one half years.
“They are both now within the distance of our star’s outer worlds. You see now the path of their flight and their present positions, and now their projected paths, taking them within the orbits of the inner worlds, where they will certainly execute final maneuvers, for their present courses and decelerations would have them both eventually impact with the sun.
“At this distance, I have been able to achieve some results in my efforts to identify these emanations, both psionicly and visually. I have been able to prove by observing them that psionic thought travels across vast distances much more quickly than light, perhaps by doing so through the medium that Translocations pass through. This does much to explain my inability to match the locations of distant civilizations I have sighted with those I have detected psionicly. The mathematics necessary to correlate it all are not yet completely developed.
“The first of the two psionic emanations are a cluster of sixteen small artificial worlds, each some half a kilometer to forty-three kilometers in diameter, inhabited by a completely alien race with very little psionic output as individuals, and thus I can tell you nothing of them beyond that they seem very determined. Determined to do what, I do not know. Their aggregate emanations were only detectable initially because they number over seventeen billion individuals. Mitigating this distressing number is the fact that I think them to be very small, perhaps no larger than gnomes, based on the size of features on their worldlets that must serve the function of doors.
“As for the other source, it has been identified more precisely, and the truth could not be worse.
“We all know that seven million, four hundred and sixty-five thousand years ago, Kellaran was invaded by a race not of our world. They conquered half a continent and created a new race from one of ours in less than fifty years, and threatened to exterminate us all before being obliterated by the collective might of the gods of Kellaran. They said that they came from another kind of reality, but that was a lie to make them seem more dangerous, and to prevent us from searching for their origin. They merely traveled through another reality. They are from our own reality, and they are about to return here. This object is an irregular piece of rock some nine hundred and twenty kilometers in its largest dimension, and it is inhabited by demons. Millions of them. Perhaps billions.”
The delegates of The Just Alliance had been listening in avid fascination, but at this they erupted into a cacophony of exclamations.
“And you plan to fight the demons with the military you have built on Serminak?” Somonik pointedly inquired, loudly enough to be heard over the noise.
“Not exclusively.” The Dragon Lord admitted. “I have plans in place to bring the other races under my influence. They will then be subjected to military reforms similar to those I have enacted here. They are soft and undisciplined now, but having established a reliable system here in Serminak, it will not be difficult to quickly duplicate it all over Kellaran. This is necessary to ensure the cohesive defense of our world. You will have to excuse me if this discomfits any of you. Things have not proceeded nearly as rapidly as I had hoped, but sufficient time still remains.”
This triggered a louder roar from the assembly, this one of outrage.
“Zarkog, you have been engaged in astronomy for most of the last month, and it is obvious that you did not refresh your knowledge of international current events before you came rushing to see me.” Quewanak sternly stated. “I strongly advise that you do so now, before we go any further.”
“I will do so.” Zarkog nodded, oblivious to the uproar he’d created. “I will return shortly.” He faded away over the space of a second, leaving the view into the vast darkened cavern, his astronomy display still active on the floor.
“That’s funny.” Mark commented with a wry smile. “He was unaware of everything that’s been happening in The Just Alliance and Venak. He’s about to find out that the whole world has changed in the last few days, and he missed it.”
“He’ll know it soon enough.” Yazadril stated firmly, thinking furiously enough to furrow his brow. “This is bad. He would not lie about the demons and the worldlets. He knows that our own astronomers will quickly confirm or deny the truth of it, having been shown the locations and paths of these objects.
“We’re already working on it. We’ll have visuals in a few minutes.” Grakonexikaldoron stated.
Mark shuddered slightly as everything sank in a bit, then he pulled himself together with a grim expression. “All right. I’d really like to know what happened with the demons seven and a half million years ago. What kind of abilities and weapons did they have, and how many of them were there back then? What kind of damage did they do, and how did the fight against them go?”
“Briefly, the demons appeared suddenly, with no warning, several thousand strong, on a land mass that has since subsided, and is now the ocean between Xervia and Serminak, which were then a single larger continent.” Somonik explained. “Cruel and voracious, they treated every creature as prey, from mice to dragonkind with no distinction between them, and took great delight in inflicting the maximum of suffering before slaying and eating their victims. Their fighters ranged in size from that of a small dog to as large as myself, for they grow constantly when well fed. They are vicious with tooth and claw and horn, and not above such weapons as swords and spears, though they never showed any particular skill in that regard, relying instead on strength, speed, and aggression. They utilized strange and terrible sorceries as their primary means of combat, against which there was initially no defense, and from which there is no healing. My maiming was done by demon-fire, early in the conflict. They were able to choose the configurations of their bodies, and could grow wings or tails if they so desired, or extra arms or legs, or horns, antlers, spikes and spines of any sort. Every part of them is poisonous to every form of life on Kellaran; their breath, their spittle, their droppings, their flesh and blood.
“The demons had their way of it in the beginning. Only those in their vicinity contested them. They were few at first, and were not considered a threat by more distant peoples, but they expanded their depredations and their populations quickly. Within six years all of Kellaran was fighting them, and losing. Our nations were not truly unified, and each fought the demons on the front closest to their homelands. The demons were just as glad that we attacked them, for they were as content to eat our war-dead as to hunt us, and it saved them a great deal of traveling. Each death in the war only seemed to make them stronger, for they delighted in each other’s pain and suffering as much as they did in ours, and they ate their own dead as eagerly as they ate ours.
“Initially the gods were content to provide aid through their priesthoods in the form of power, spells, knowledge on how to counter the demons’ spells, up-to-date information, and mighty weapons. But it was not nearly enough.
“Glishkerkugthak, the Kwetkerthok God of Life, was the first deity to take a direct hand. His race was being decimated, the demons having arrived in the heart of gargoyle territory. He slew one out of every four demons on Kellaran in his first day in the fight, every one that he could kill without endangering his people or ours, and by then there were millions of demons. They withdrew from the battle and hid from his wrath for two days, and then all of them working together, they baited him and attacked him with all of their power and their hate. It’s said he was nearly slain, and he was driven absolutely insane. None know how this was done. His screams could literally be heard by every person and creature on Kellaran, and we were all tortured with it for a period of eight minutes and eleven seconds that seemed to last an eternity. It took the other gods to rescue him, and it took them over two eons after that war to Heal him from an inescapable nightmare of absolute suffering and horror.
“The torture of Glishkerkugthak united the gods and peoples of Kellaran against the demons. Four out of every five remaining demons were slain the next day in an assault by the gods, and if I’d managed to convince Kellaran’s armies to stay out of their way, the gods might have exterminated the demons and ended it that day. But the peoples hungered for revenge and pressed the attack at that seemingly opportune time, and thus some demons escaped, because the gods could