Anguhr jolted. He shouted to Solok. “Stay here! Summon the ship if I so order.”
“Understood, Lord!” Solok barked.
His words were unheard by Anguhr who already ran to the cube. His motion felt labored and slowed. He leapt and thrust up his arms. His hands caught the sharp edge of the cube. With great effort, he pulled himself to the top. Zaria stood across from him on the ebony surface. Anguhr stepped back to the edge as another sphere rose from the top of the half-sunken cube. The smaller sphere opened at its equator. Its bottom half slid up into its top to reveal a more complex shape underneath it. Anguhr bent down to look at it, but the half-sphere slid down to show the tetrahedron within it.
The brief, heavy pause returned. The half sphere and tetrahedron then sank into the square remnant of the cube. The tetrahedron flattened into a triangular base. Only it remained with its sides rising over both Anguhr and Zaria. Anguhr jumped and pulled himself up again. He saw Zaria smile at him across the triangular base before another sphere rose between them. This sphere’s top half rolled down to reveal a more complicated dodecahedron solid. The pause returned. The sphere flowed into the triangular base as the dodecahedron flattened to a ten-sided plateau rising off the triangle. Anguhr took an instinctive breath, and leapt.
Anguhr glanced down. His altitude was high enough to make Solok appear no larger than Anguhr’s thumb on the Iron Work’s surface below. He stood and saw Zaria again with her arms out. Another, yet smaller sphere rose up. This sphere parted at its side with the icosahedron pointed at Anguhr. Under his helmet, he raised his eyebrows. The shape flipped with the half sphere at the bottom. For a moment, he felt frozen but thought he saw a glimmer of flowing water beyond the black shapes triangular facets. The half-sphere flowed back into the previous base. The icosahedron sank into a hexagon tier.
Anguhr was intrigued, but knew the race up the sides of this odd, rising mountain must end at some point. The prize would be at the summit. Or one very angry General from Hell. He leapt and pulled himself up to the next, flat plane. For once he had tied with Zaria.
This sphere and shape manifested in mere blinks. An octahedron stood revealed. Its bottom point rested at the center of the wide, hexagonal base. It sank but formed a pyramid, not a triangular plane. Its base was small enough for Anguhr to sprint around to confront Zaria. She wasn’t standing on the opposite side. Anguhr looked up. Zaria was already scaling the pyramid. He let out a sharp growl and charged after her. The slope was steep, but the surface allowed purchase by flattening hands and feet as best as possible. He thought of tossing aside his massive axe. He thought better of it as he may need it to cleave Zaria in half. Anguhr reasoned the surface was meant to climb. Zaria was certainly making it look easy. He quickened his pace. As with the water, Anguhr noticed a faint image of clouds just beyond the black surface. He wondered if he hadn’t noticed other images on the preceding shapes. He focused on Zaria. She was at the summit.
At the pyramid’s top, Zaria watched a narrow cylinder rise from the pinnacle. It began to glow with surging, blinding white light. She grabbed the cylinder and pulled with all her strength. Ledges flowed from all four sides at the level of Zaria’s feet. She strained. The flashing cylinder moved only slightly. Anguhr climbed over the ledge Zaria stood on. He saw Zaria pulling up on the brilliant cylinder. He righted himself, and grabbed hold. They pulled in unison. Brilliant white flooded their vision as the rod came free. It was half as long as Zaria. Anguhr thrust it into overhead. He felt as though an unimaginably loud thunder roared right at his ears. It was pressure from radiation. The white light became more intense and the atmosphere felt as though it thickened.
“The grapnel!” Zaria screamed with all power across all the frequencies she could summon. “The grapnel! Slide the rod into the grapnel!”
Zaria turned her back to Anguhr. He could only see vague masses in the whiteout, but enough to do what she screamed. The black, hexagonal grapnel node accepted the brilliant, white rod. The intense light dimmed as it slid deeper down. When only the length in Anguhr’s hand remained, the flashing ceased. The top of the pyramid seemed impossibly still. Zaria and Anguhr’s only comments were deep breaths and long seconds of gathering their thoughts. The beat of Solok’s wings brought time back into motion.
“Lord?” Solok queried. He was uncertain as to what had occurred and hoped it all made sense to his General.
Anguhr steadied himself by holding the point of the pyramid where a narrow, cylindrical void now existed. “Go secure my transit craft.” Anguhr breathed. “I will come there, soon.”
Zaria took a deep breath. She looked out across the Iron Work and stellar setting. She nodded to herself, and smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The echo of the demons’ mournful cry died in the red flames across the ship.
“The coordinates are entered,” Voltris said and dropped his head forward and his hands away from his control dais. “We are en route to your Lord Anguhr’s position.”
“He is your Lord, now.” Uruk said. He sniffed the air, but suppressed a sneer.
Xuxuhr’s head still peered up with sunken, cuttlefish eyes from its makeshift coffin. It was difficult to accept that Generals could die. Thus, Uruk had never imagined rotting stench from a General. Bad smells on occasion, but not rot. Voltris also noticed the odor from the strangely natural process happening to the giant hellspawn’s severed head.
“I do not know what to do with the head of my Lord.” Voltris said looking inside the box. Even with skin of thorns and serpentine eyes, his face fluctuated between expressions of pathos and reverence. “There is no standing order or program, and no protocol for what do. It is we who are to die, not our General, not our Lord.”
“A pyre is always a good means to honor the fallen, no matter rank.” Uruk offered. “We demons are not creatures of ceremony, save to burn the dead when we can. It is our enemy that burn in greater number. Still, as he was your Lord, and we make pyres for our dead, then a pyre for a General befits his remains.”
“And if the remains are only his head?” Voltris asked and cast an almost accusing stare at Uruk.
Uruk still endured his headache from diplomacy, and ignored the glare. “The rest of him will be consumed by the star trapped by the Iron Work. What better a pyre for all his parts than Hell’s own massive star?”
Voltris looked back at Xuxuhr’s head and fingered the link fragment hung around his neck. He nodded. “I agree. So shall it be done.”
The Red Giant dominated the scene on the ship’s outer hull. Triat and his strike wing stood on the fiery surface beams over the bridge. Voltris stood before them with a unit of demons holding up the resealed coffin. Uruk stood to the side of the first-ever demon honor guard. He left Zahl and the original coffin guard inside the bridge. Voltris pushed the coffin and the demons holding it released their grip. The metal box sailed out from the ship towards the vast, burning face of the Red Giant.
Voltris realized the pitch was not sufficient for Xuxuhr’s head to sail straight into the stellar fires. He calculated the velocity of the ship; the coffin’s vector; the angle of toss; the gravitational effects of the ship and the wake of the main drive. These factors might cause the enclosed head to make an orbit before gravity, as odd as it behaved around the Iron Work, to finally take the head close enough to the star for incineration. For a time, Xuxuhr’s head might even become a small planetoid. These factors he would keep to himself.
Voltris turned and nodded to Triat who then flew up. The lines of Triat’s force followed each other in a precise succession of demon waves that soared into space. They followed Triat’s arc back to the ship and through the gaps between the fiery beams. The wingless Voltris watched the arcs of flying demons, and then climbed back down to the bridge. Uruk followed him.
When the echo of the demons’ mournful cry died, the Ignitaurs were preparing to strike. Their ears were well adapted to gathering ship sounds and demon speech. Intelligence and intuition made sense of the a
uditory cues. Many bovine eyes stared at the top of their prison when the wail began. They had initially looked at each other with as much shock as the demons. Then they vibrated with joy. The short, conic ears fluttered to the sides of thick, obsidian horns rising in a slope to the back of their boulder skulls. Grooves just as those in rows of molars ran along the center of the horns that curled into pointed loops. Older individuals used small prongs jutting from their main horns to hang small hammers and tongs. Their ancestors had used the horns for ramming one another for sexual displays, disputes, and sport. Both male and females adults grew the black horns. Their eyes were a deeper black and useful as tools for hiding intent. The constantly staring, inscrutable orbs sat astride blunted bulls’ snouts ending in wide, flaring nostrils. Ancestral Ignitaurs looked indistinguishable between sexes, and to intimidated predators. The lack of dimorphism continued into civilization, technology, and ethereal mastery. Such mastery did not spare their world from Xuxuhr, but their cultural trait of patience served them in captivity.
The imprisoned Ignitaurs had dreamed of freedom with every stoke of their forges or blow of their hammers on anvils. They realized they could not overcome the horde if the world ravager Xuxuhr was with them. At some point, the Ignitaurs believed he would be gone long enough to strike and take the ship. However, as pragmatic creatures, they would accept annihilation of themselves and their demon jailers. The General’s death subtracted his power from the horde and weakened it psychologically. Thus, they would all be easier to kill.
To achieve such vast death, the bull-like people turned to skills other than chain making. The Dark Urge was a being of arcane powers. Collectively, so were the Ignitaurs. Their specialty as smiths was to control flames. And then they were forced onto a ship constantly ablaze. They had carefully fashioned means to tap the ship’s metaphysics for their own causes. One was to appease their jailer with enchanted chains. This bought time to plan how to snap their bondage. They curled the ship’s fire to heat their forges to make chains. In time, they gained greater control of this crimson force. The inscrutable faces of the Ignitaurs, either colored burnished red or dark brown, served to protect their plans just as the fire protected the ship. If the Ignitaurs could smile, they would at the thought of controlling flame to burn demons. The hellish fires would also power the secret weapons they forged alongside the massive links.
The Ignitaurs disguised weapon parts as cooled drops of molten metal; slag; discarded lumps of dross; shavings; and splintered tools. The crafty and powerful smiths gathered the parts from piles and pits. The time had come to assemble them all. By the time Xuxuhr came to their world, Ignitaurs had been spacefarers for generations. Their once powerful rear legs receded in microgravity. The strong arms remained to propel themselves through ships and the corridors of their world remade with steel. The false gravity of the Hell ship lent itself to the ancient art of ramming enemies. Vestigial legs became clad them in steel prosthetics made from joined helixes. The two sections inverted like bovine limbs for springing power.
The Ignitaur weapons focused the ship's flames into offensive firepower. More weapons disguised as splinters fit together into flame throwers that needed no fuel because it rippled around them on the walls. The weapons amplified the heat enough to burn through demon thorns. Units that employed these guns were reinforced by others armed by simpler fabrications. Swords or clubs brought against the skull of a demon had great effect when swung by the strength of an arcane smith. The Ignitaurs were now an army.
All the weapons and plans would be a pile of waste unless they could also forge a key and escape. Seven older and powerful Ignitaurs assembled their object of liberation. Curved spines fit together into a circle. The spines resembled rays curling out from a sun. The center star was yet to form. The Ignitaurs stepped back from their solar talisman. A low moan echoed across the bilge deck as all focused on the sun’s empty center. The talisman rose and turned to a right angle to the deck floor. A red spark crackled at the center of the metal rays. It flared into an arcing ball of crimson. The red fires grew brighter and then into intense violet light. The circle of metal rays began to melt. Small beads flew from the metal rays. Those struck did not move. The groups’ focus was total. The moan grew louder and rose in pitch. The talisman turned again, level between the deck floor and imprisoning ceiling. The intense ball of violet light became a small, white star. Its power shot as a column of plasma into the ceiling and through the bilge deck. The ship lurched. The metal rays of the talisman fell as a cascade of molten metal. A wide hole with glowing edges now smoldered above them. The Ignitaurs were free.
Anguhr stepped from his chariot. He had returned Zaria and Solok to the marshalling point near the access canyon.
“All is prepared, Lord Destroyer.” the recognized demon Goro said. He commanded the combined units of Anguhr’s forces and Xuxuhr’s surviving engineers.
“Good,” Anguhr said. He took the grapnel node housing the power rod from its cable sling now hung on his left shoulder. He gripped and pulled the handle. A beams of white light escaped the perfect fit of the two elements. He slid it back and felt a reverberation through the grapnel as if an immense weight struck a solid bottom.
“Yes, you can pull it back out.” Zaria said beside him. “Do not.”
“I will if I please,” Anguhr said. “Especially when I need to use this weapon.”
“It is not yet a true weapon.” Zaria countered.
“We shall see,” Anguhr said. “How did you tame the machine that held the rod?”
“I did not tame it,” Zaria replied. “I answered its questions.”
“Questions?” Anguhr asked as he slid the grapnel back toward his axe.
“You could not hear them, because you were not listening.” Zaria said.
“I will not hear riddles, either!” Anguhr barked.
“Nor do I wish to be a prisoner.” Zaria glared back. “Yet I act as I must to achieve what must be done.”
“Tell me the answers.” Anguhr stepped to loom over Zaria.
“The answers are formulas for Platonic solids.” Zaria stared back at Anguhr. “In the order you saw, they were once used in an old, very old model of a solar system, now forgotten. Thus, the ability to predict the next formula was based on knowledge of history. From outer-most world toward the one closest to the sun. You may well have a file stored deep down in that smoldering skull, but you have never had context to use it. And even now, your tactic of domination would take you astray from the path I opened.”
“Platon is some system, some empire now dead?” Anguhr asked.
“No.” Zaria smiled at the General’s ignorance. “It’s a theory of long ago. Long dead. To most.”
“Why would anyone, including this ancient machine, store such useless data?” Anguhr looked up and across the vast, black surface hazed red. “Why would it unlock traps here on the Iron Work?”
“Exactly,” Zaria said. “Why? Because it’s history. Part of their history. The Builders. Part of mine. You could call it whimsical, but the link to history is also a lock. That lock is a hope that intellects that can answer the questions are also part of the Builders’ legacy. Or are at least good at obscure geometry. Like I said, whimsical. But what else could beings become when invested with such power?”
Anguhr returned his gaze to Zaria with a curious stare.
“Oh, you still wish Hell to be supreme?” Zaria asked. “Or do you now want to be the great power. King Anguhr.”
“I am a General.” Anguhr growled.
“And a god, or at least the messianic link for your demons.” Zaria motioned her head toward the assembled demons. “What to do when that link is broken, General?”
“Do not anger me. I am also the Destroyer.”
“And that, Destroyer, is why you chased me up the Platonic rise. You are a deviation. I am part of the legacy that ultimately led to this machine, or, more so, the ability to build something like this.”
“And your Asherah.” Anguhr
said. “The thing in Old Jove.”
“Old Jove?” Gin asked as he joined Zaria, still bound at his hands.
Anguhr growled at seeing Gin, but replied. “The largest gas giant of this system. What we thought was a true planet.”
“It was,” Zaria said and raised her eyebrows. “How odd a spawn of Hell would call it Old Jove.”
“Why?” Anguhr demanded.
“It’s almost whimsical,” Zaria said. “It suggests even Hell’s mind still holds a psychological link to past ages. Unconscious knowledge has an impact on behavior. It shapes us as much as our conscious actions. Perhaps powerfully. It’s an important lesson.”
“I am not here to be schooled.” Anguhr sneered and looked over at his unified demons.
“Yet, what you didn’t know prevented you from gaining the prize you sought.” Zaria said.
“I have it now.” Anguhr jerked the grapnel’s sling.
“Because I allowed you to take it,” Zaria smiled. “I did that because I need it as well. Power, General. You think you have it because you can destroy. And yet your new weapon and all your powers come from gathered information. That thing you hold. You think it a power rod. But it is stored data. The information is what makes it powerful. Its radiation only a byproduct of what it holds. Don't drop it. If you prove a good student, I will teach you how to use it.”
“Ha!” Anguhr laughed. “It is a powerful weapon now, and only my strength can remove it from its grapnel scabbard.”
“As it is configured now, it is only a bomb.” Zaria said. “There is one other piece that will make it complete and ensure it can be delivered into Hell itself.”
Anguhr took a deep breath and stretched his shoulders. The grapnel and axe clinked together. He then turned to Zaria and fixed a long stare on her.
“Need I say: give it to me?” Anguhr at last remarked.
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