by Chad Huskins
“Chose me?”
He looked over at Moira.
“I was looking for you in that debris field for another reason,” she said. “I’m still a working girl. Once I came here, the wyrms alerted Thulm and d’Arhagen, and Thulm came out to speak to me on one of my expeditions south of here. He found out who I was, and what connection I had to you. He and d’Arhagen seem to believe it was providence.”
Lyokh eyed her, then looked back at Thulm. “Chose me for what? Who is d’Arhagen? What…” He trailed off, looking up just as the shadow of an immense purple greatwyrm went soaring overhead. It landed at the far end of the platform, lowered its long neck, and bowed its head. On top of its bony skull stood a bipedal life-form. “What is all this? What the hell is going on?”
The figure on the greatwyrm’s head stepped down. The creature was three heads taller than Lyokh at least, with massive arms, each one tipped with four fingers. It wore armor that looked to have been molded to its dark flesh, with sinewy wires flexing at the joints, and a helmet with a blank face and no visor. He walked with weird, smooth precision, and when it came up to Lyokh, the alien towered over him and held him in its shadow. Slowly, it raised its hands, and removed its helmet, revealing an alien face Lyokh had never seen in all his life.
When the alien spoke, it did so in a strange, half-guttural, half-singsong language.
“Dredda’dress’dresda’dredda’dreth’dreya,” it said.
Lyokh looked at Moira, who was smiling, then back at the alien. He started to say something, but just then, the greatwyrm threw its head up in the air and let out a harsh, ululating noise, and flapped its wings in rippling waves. Lyokh saw the man Thulm raise his hand to the sky, tears in his eyes, a smile of utter bliss smeared across his face. Lyokh and Moira both turned to where he was pointing.
Heaven’s mercy, what am I seeing?
There, in the sky, hovering just as they had for a billion years or more and peeking out from behind clouds, were the three moons he knew well. That alone might have been enough to cause Lyokh to tremble with uncertainty and fear, but then he saw the closest moon, and a strange formation of rings around it that at first eluded him. Then, as it resolved, he came to see the undulating mass for what it was. Lyokh walked around the Series Seven to get a better look, and stood atop the mountain, gaping at a creature far larger than any had any right to be.
Magonogon encircled the moon like a god.
All thoughts of Kalder, of the war, of the past and future were gone. The mysteries of the Strangers, the Worshippers, and the Watchtowers could wait. Lyokh dropped to his knees, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of some innate human need to kneel before supreme power, or perhaps just out of sheer awe.
Magonogon opened its mouth, its jaws wide enough to consume whole fleets, whole oceans. It screamed in silence. Then, it turned its great head towards the mortals on the planet below. Somehow, even from such a distance, Lyokh knew it was looking at him.
To be continued in The Ghosts of Dwimer…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chad Huskins is the EVVY Award-winning author of Khan in Rasputin’s Shadow and The Sol Ascendancy. His Pscyho Save Us trilogy has sold the film rights to Sundance Film Award winner John Harkrider, and he has written for Masters Magazine and Black Belt Magazine. He teaches Filipino Kali and Jeet Kune Do, and lives outside of Atlanta, Georgia.
If you liked this work, and would like to share your love and enthusiasm for it, you can contact him at [email protected], or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
