A troubling event also had occurred. Two fluctuations emanated from Old Jove, the gas giant in distant orbit around Hell’s Red Giant. One was certainly a transmission. Its apparent destination was strange. Troubling. Hell’s sovereign must be told. The Great Widow dreaded to see her only friend and tyrant. When last she entered the presence of the Dark Urge, the spider crept to her mistress’ speaking chamber. This time she would have to seek out the Dark Urge and disturb her. The news of her plans going awry might drive the dark mind into arachnacidal rage. The Great Widow had lived for a very long time. She had grown accustomed to the state, and never wished it altered. Yet she could not run from the Dark Urge. She was Hell. Hell was a hot and horrid place. Many might think it was the perfect place for a giant spider, but the Great Widow dreamed of a time she could rest in her web, perhaps a different kind of web, and dream of something other than fire.
The Great Widow traveled towards Hell’s raging heart. She entered the shaft that was the final doom of the Generals’ plunder. The sectioned parts of conquered worlds floated in an orderly spaced train down to Hell’s molten core far below. It glowed as a bright, yellow-white dot at the distant bottom of the shaft. The ore blocks of planets disappeared as specks in the bright point of the inferno. The perpetual draw of material down the shaft included gasses and heat. The air pulled downward almost felt like a breeze, if a breeze was a constant current of fire. The train of ore blocks descended from orbit through a portal that revealed the cold black of space. For a moment, the Great Widow imagined herself floating freely beside the train in that frigid vacuum. She pressed on.
Hell continued its axial tilt in orbit. This hemisphere would soon be in the season the Great Widow still called Winter. Then, the Red Giant would cede the sky. Only its distant siblings would be visible from the scalded portals. Below her the Dark Urge labored as the great machine. The Iron Work was finished long ago. Yet her current work had purpose in her twisted mind. The ore became searing, black ingots that rose skyward through another shaft and travel to the banded, red star.
The Great Widow called to the Dark Urge, but her cries were lost in the building roar of arcane fires. The spider wished she could paralyze the uncertainties she came to report and wrap them in silk. She would carry them on her back until she found her mistress in a less searing location. The ethereal heat and radiation nearly overwhelmed her. The spider rested for a brief moment inside a horizontal channel. She called again to the Dark Urge across the spectrum. Urgency colored her cries. The entrance to the channel closed around her and blocked out all light. The Great Widow felt an ease of the heat but greater oppression. Her mistress had heard her calls. The entrance opened again like the grasp of an eight fingered hand. The Great Widow crawled from the palm and entered a junction chamber. The Dark Urge was present only as a labored panting.
“I am weary, little thing.” The voice of the Dark Urge echoed from all directions. “Tell me news of my Generals and my plans so that I may be pleased and my pain abated some small amount.”
“Mistress, your forces are setting out to follow your orders.” The spider felt a presence directly behind her. She turned slowly, but the presence stayed at her back, out of sight. “Your plan is underway.”
The Great Widow paused her briefing to think. She would reveal Anguhr’s disappearance at the end. Perhaps the curious fluctuations of Old Jove would lessen the potential for panic by giving a curious puzzle to fathom.
“And is that the truth?” A hum continued in the same tones of the Dark Urge’s voice after the question.
“I am always truthful to you, Mistress.” The Great Widow stretched her calipers. “Again, in time, you will be victorious. There—”
“In time.” The Dark Urge interrupted. “Tanuhr often thought of time.”
The spider again became silent. She wondered if the Dark Urge could possibly be toying with her. Also in time, the Great Widow would reveal Tanuhr’s fate. In time, she would weave a story that would show his death protected the Dark Urge. Thus the story would protect the spider. Yet, could the Dark Urge somehow sense his death? Right now, the spider would continue without mention of Tanuhr. One missing General at a time was enough.
“Yes, mistress. I know.” The spider spoke in a gentle hiss. She still moved slowly to glimpse the thing that kept at her back with her eyes near the back on her carapace.
“I know many things, too.” The Dark Urge said.
“More than any mind, mistress.” The Great Widow reassured with a tone or reverence.
“And you now will tell me more.” The Dark Urge demanded.
The thing at the spiders back stopped keeping pace. The Great Widow wished she never set sight on it with even one of her eyes. It was looking back at her. A giant shark’s eye stared at her from the uncomfortably close wall.
“Yes, mistress.” The Great Widow continued by summoning her arachnid patience, courage, and skill at acting oblivious.
“There have been anomalies from the proximity of Old Jove. I would call one a transmission as it—”
“Asherah!” The Dark Urge shouted.
The Great Widow flattened herself to cope with the pressure of the shout striking her on all sides. She knew Anguhr was tasked to find the legendary world in the location of Old Jove. Thus it seemed the Dark Urge knew another secret not revealed to her spider, nor had the Great Widow ever found it among the vibrations of her web. The spider assumed the Dark Urge crushed the galaxy to reveal Asherah by seeing its shape covered in the flow of dust.
“Where?” The Dark Urge’s voice became piercing. “Where did she go?”
“She, Mistress?”
“Tell me!”
“The direction was at the Iron Work.” The Great Widow backed away from the glaring eye.
The junction vibrated. The shark’s eye stretched tightly and deformed. Its top and bottom split in two halves. The center tear became a screaming mouth. All Hell itself screamed. The spider recoiled. She was confused, but then recalled the recent orders given to the Generals. The spider realized that despite her madness, the Dark Urge had foreseen this event. She understood Hell’s machines and so grasped at least some functions of the Iron Work. What the Dark Urge saw made her afraid. What caused the fear, the spider didn’t know. But if it threatened Hell, the Great Widow feared it, too. If she could, she would join her dread sovereign and scream.
Their journey through the ether had taken them more than the diameter of a small star in the time span of a blink. Yet, Zaria and her warriors would need to walk to their final destination. Their path lay across a desolate field of black that seemed never ending. Zaria wondered what the Builder’s had thought if they ever walked across their great achievement. The vastness of one small patch of the incredible machine was hard to fathom, even to giants. On the Iron Work, Zaria and her warriors were less than gnats on the wing of an albatross. They were as microbes on a bridge span built to roll planets across. The Iron Work was a feat of incredible engineering, and caprice.
Even with all the power Zaria possessed and had seen unleashed, she was still stunned by the view. Her intellect was as shocked as the new minds of her warriors. They looked across a great slot cut in the Iron Work to store information akin to forgotten times when books were stored on shelves. They could only see the very edge closest to them. This slot was wider than most terrestrial planets’ diameters. Its depth was nearly incomprehensible. The objects within were plucked from orbits and stored safely by great intellects with nostalgic whims. Looking across the slot was close in experience to looking from a planet’s surface toward orbiting worlds in a sky. However, these worlds rested in a neat and evenly spaced line. There appeared to be place holders or plain, new dust jackets for deteriorated volumes. Those were massive spheres the color of the Iron Work. They sat beside original volumes. Some of their natural hues were visible in the red haze. One towards Zaria and her band was a dusty, grey world. It once governed ocean tides on the planet of the Builders’ distant ancestors. Hum
anity looked up to see it at nearly the same distance away as Zaria saw it. Humanity had called the grey world, simply, the Moon.
Zaria turned and began walking. She enjoyed the physical act, even encased in her armor. It flowed across her body like emerald ice. Her long, golden hair was now gathered at the back of her sheer helmet. A pouch hung at her left hip. The handle of her sword rose behind her right shoulder. The long blade rippled like a ribbon of black flame nearly as long as Zaria’s body. It was the only thing that seemed kindred to this astonishing, metallic place. The alloy Zaria fashioned for her sword was inspired by the surface she walked over.
Elements of the same technology that built Asherah and maintained Eden enabled Zaria to manipulate codes of its lifeforms into the savage shapes that followed her. Their eyes had never beheld the peace and beauty of the garden, only the steel and glass shapes of Zaria’s workshop. The same steel coiled within their muscle and sinew. The giant Bron and his brother Caliburn possessed great strength and massive fists. The ancestors of their donor species gave rise to the grace of a racehorse, and the rampaging might of the rhinoceros. Zaria’s tweaks in genetics and fabrication created their unlikely ape-like forms. The base of the peaceful neoamynodonts became the twin rampages awaiting Zaria’s order.
The archers were less tall and far less massive than their giant allies. They walked ahead of Zaria’s force with arrows at the ready. The feathered wings of hawks became strong and swift arms. Bodies with the power to beat wings now powered the flight of armor-piercing arrows. Each forearm was a living quiver of feathers transformed into lethal shafts. As humanized as the archers’ forms had become, their faces still held the searching gaze of a raptor.
The eyes of the gulos also searched for prey. Their basics from the sabens were now enlarged, streamlined, and silver. They cast a form between bears and wolves. The gulos’ surface appeared the most artificial of Zaria’s creations with rippling steel as muscle and skin. Yet the hunters held the most natural shape of Eden’s warriors. The gulos trotted swiftly on four limbs across the black surface. Swift cetaceans in Eden’s seas further influenced their bodies. They were the most numerous of Zaria’s force.
Zaria’s calculations placed their arrival within the ethereal envelope radiating outward from their mission’s target. The protective field spared Zaria and her warriors the crushing gravity and incinerating heat present across most of the Iron Work. The incredible width of the band precluded the risk of falling into the face of the sun, even if something altered their trajectory. And something had altered their course by leagues. It materialized inside Old Jove as Zaria left her protectorate. She now felt an even greater sense of urgency to complete this mission. What ship, or thing, would arrive near Eden, and for what purpose? If Eden came under attack, she would know it. So far, nothing attempted to violate her garden. Zaria marched onward. Gin’s sensors guided her path. She held her companion out before her. Gin now held a form he found ironic for the site. He was a translucent ball of amber. Nevertheless, he could still transmit his thoughts audibly. The field allowed voices to be heard.
“This place, this machine, is beyond incredible.” Gin observed. “It dwarfs even Asherah’s design. Is there an operating system at work here, as I am to Asherah?”
“I shudder to think so,” Zaria answered. “I would imagine that no single mind could control such a construction, and I have never encountered or sensed a mental presence from it.”
“Perhaps it is so vast, we could not.” Gin pondered.
“The Builders may have thought the task too immense, or could not design an intellect strong enough to survive such strain.” Zaria said.
“As in Hell.” Gin said.
“Yes.” Zaria paused in reflection. “But the Forge had its complications imparted from outside powers.”
“Those would-be plunderers dared not touch the Iron Work.” Gin said. “Perhaps it very absence of a mind made them uninterested.”
“I would guess the Iron Work is so well ordered that it needs no creative compensators. No minds.” Zaria looked about her seeing only the even plane of black and the red haze. “They built it so well, or so elegantly, it functions close to perfection.”
“Though they did create an error in my design.” Gin observed. “I could not act to manage Asherah’s ecological aspects. I could only run the machines that housed it. If you had not come and joined me, the habitat would not be as diverse or vibrant. Worse, it would be stagnant. You remade it into Eden.”
“The Iron Work is vast and its machinery powerful, but it has a single goal. It needs keep a balance on physics and machines. Life is more complex. And at least you have kept Asherah functioning, old friend.” Zaria patted the amber ball in her hand. “It always needed a guardian before a gardener.”
“And here we are on its sibling, so vast we defenders of life are less than a speck of dust on a sword blade.” Gin mused.
“And this was merely one band of the Iron Work,” Zaria added with a smile. “Now we must focus passed our awe if we are to meet our goal and steal an iota of this stellar prison.”
“The force capacitors are ahead. Slivers of a cog maintaining the Iron Work’s grasp on the Red Giant.” Gin said. “A part to your own great design to free the galaxy from the might of Hell.”
Zaria said nothing more and continued to lead the trek across the seeming infinite black and red-hazed realm. Imagination collected the crimson glow like fog and massed it far ahead to create a false dawn overhung by a red-tinted curtain of space.
All Zaria’s warriors followed behind her. They should be all that traveled across this titanic construction. Zaria froze. Far ahead, something moved. A dot cut through the sky. Flashes of white challenged the fiery haze. Zaria strained to magnify what lay ahead. The thing in the sky sailed on wings darker than the Iron Work. The demon prowled the sky, searching for anything else violating the desolation. Other sentries were certainly near.
“Zaria!” the voice came from the amber Gin in her hand.
“I see it. And the others below it. So far, we are still unseen by them.”
“How could the Dark Urge know our plans?” Gin asked.
“I see more demons at the edge of our target. The flashes appear to be explosions.”
“They can’t believe they can—but perhaps they are using demolition charges.” Gin said.
“Yes. The demons must be here for the same things we came to gather. At least they are not here to intercept us.”
“I’m afraid—” Gin paused. His dread was clear. “There is one among them of special note. Can you see him?”
Zaria strained her eyes under Gin’s guidance. She also heard the sounds. The bark of demons. The heavy tumble of massive chain links. A massive figure became visible through the red haze. It stood tall above the others. One of Hell’s Generals directed his horrific minions. A length of massive chain wrapped his left arm and dangled to a coil of links beside him.
“Xuxuhr, the Ravager.” Zaria said. She found her new teeth clenched on physical instinct. She thought of the mysterious anomaly that diverted them in transit. Were these events connected?
“Why would a General control an expeditionary force?” Gin asked. “Could Xuxuhr be free of the Dark Urge’s control?”
“Doubtful. But whoever is the master here, we will have to fight to achieve our own designs sooner than I thought. At least we can deny the demons’ success. We will need to know their numbers, old friend.”
“My eyes are yours, Zaria. I will learn what I can.”
Zaria threw Gin high above them. Her strength was more than enough to act with ease in the Iron Work’s gravity. Yet she was careful not to hurl his amber ball outside the protective envelope lest the forces beyond it destroy him. Their target and the General’s location was an opened access panel of the Iron Work. Its precise edges defined a rectangular canyon that stretched far into the distance. Although it was tiny compared the bookshelf behind them, it was still epic in scale. Titanic black
squares floated over the canyon. The squares moved with such slowness that they appeared fixed in space. An immense field of hexagonal columns flowed in grids across the canyon floor. The field continued onward beneath the floating squares.
Gin counted the demons on the surface. More were undoubtedly beyond the canyon edge where he could not see. There was at least a troop, but not an entire company. No heavy weapons defended the demon positions. Gin concluded their intent was to complete their mission, swiftly. As Gin descended, he realized Zaria’s force had been traveling along a slight bulge in the black surface. Perhaps the downward slope toward the access canyon could further aid them. They would need all the tactical advantages they could muster even against a small force of demons.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Anguhr left Hell’s solar system he never looked back. His life occurred in distant reaches of space where he encountered alien species and interstellar empires. And then he destroyed them. He wanted to stay forever in combat and the presence of War. Especially if it meant being out and ahead of the other Generals. Anguhr knew communication was lost with Barkuhr. He knew Azuhr, the First, was missing by the time he was unleashed from Hell. He assumed both were dead. If Hell erased its enemies, then enemies would erase the fallen from Hell. Anguhr looked forward to facing those who defeated his siblings. Hell inflicted a succession of seven Generals on creation. They were the most powerful, living war machines known. Yet, all power has limits. Now only four Generals menaced the galaxy. Anguhr had no clue Tanuhr was now gone. He would be enraged by the manner of Tanuhr’s death without battle, if not the loss of a brother. What mattered to Hell’s youngest General was finding a new, preferably arduous campaign. He did not expect to find one near Hell. Its own space was long conquered. Thus, he never found his home system intriguing. Now, that changed.
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