Damo021
xVampire3go
Timemaster
A fine black leather glove beat the chest of its owner. Rhythmic, stoic, proudly singing the words echoed by a half million voices around him.
“Beneath the root of stone we dwell,
Where hammers hymn and courage quells.
We carve the dark with blood and stone,
And feed the hearth of darkened home.”
Where hammers hymn and courage quells.
We carve the dark with blood and stone,
And feed the hearth of darkened home.”
The roaring thrusters of an amphibious carrier rippled the air above at the anthem’s final verse. Its once beautiful dwarven-gold hull was now covered in the umbral purple lace of lichens and thallophytes from Bijol rebranding. The colossal superdome beneath competed with the vessel in volume and clamor.
Junok Gjornson was not a nice man. His features perhaps comically betrayed this: slick black hair, a stern dark brow, expensive matte clothing, the many emeralds laced about his neck. He looked elegant by every measure, or as much as a dwarf could muster. He perched in an ornate throne overlooking a great, clattering colosseum. The legs of his delicate Augustain wine dripped more lavishly than the gore of the Bijol conquest.
Below his box-office vantage was the spoils of this great conquest. The ancient dwarven pastime of Thruster Ball. Part exhibition, part junkyard engineering, and perhaps two parts brutal violence. The dwarven figures could be seen assembling hovercraft from scrapyard parts and dashing them together with fervent crowds roaring around. Hundreds of thousands of dwarves stood shoulder to shoulder as the competitors risked everything to destroy each other's hastily built craft a few meters above the junkyard pitch. Neon advertisements flickered obnoxiously about the stadium. Many for trivial needs: fertilizer, spanner wrenches, calorie paste, solvents for boot repair. Disposable currency amongst the dwarves was sparse, nothing like it had been decades before. Then even items simply meant for pleasure were sold–or at least marketed–in droves. Now the most potent advertising material was belief. Belief in the Bijol. Belief that in service to strijk mining, the use of its profit to stabilize the galaxy, so that finally the dwarves might be as all humanoids were intended: free.
Amidst the masses of dwarves were perhaps the most important investment. In climate controlled suites dotted throughout the arena were the great ursine figures of Bijols clad in various team colors of the dwarven competitors below. Most of these hulking bear-like beasts were well imbibed on hallucinogens, many of them cheered and cursed the games with a fervor greater than even the dwarves. Their luxury suites were perhaps as important a tool to their pleasure as a safety measure for the dwarven mob. When displeased, the Bijol tended to extinguish their frustration with open violence. Dwarven projectiles hurled from the stands were eventually deemed to be a nuisance to the game. This was only a problem in that it upset the Bijols supporting the opposite number.
They, these most-prized new fans, had been Junok Gjornson’s great achievement. Buy in from the Bijol. Some called him a sellout, some a savior. Through this simple game of Thruster Ball he had convinced the conquerors to spare at least some of the culture of the dwarves. Complete dystopia was bad for breeding, a semblance of hope needed to remain. In that way the society and production of the dwarves could serve as the trunk with which the Bijol vine could stretch and spread. Stability required bread and games; these roared violently below.
Thruster Ball was a dangerous affair. Deaths were inevitable. It had once been the greatest honor of the dwarven society to sacrifice in such a way. Slain heroes would be cast into marble and lined venerable courtyards and streets. Each would hold a cup, and from it would overflow with the celebratory beverage grnoost (fermented bat guano). Passerbys could sup from the delicacy freely in the great celebration of excess, overabundance, surplus. In those times even to die a celebrity was to honor the great success of surfeit life.
Those times had passed. Now, many great condors sulked about the area. Even life was to be recycled. Two such hulking beasts flanked the noble suite of Junok, their proud black mantles framed eerily similar to his own. And why wouldn’t they, for millennia the great condor had been the crest of his noble house. In the ancient days, great mining forays would look longingly to the skies whenever they broke free from beneath the crust. To see one of these majestic beings above was a sign of life. A sacrifice the giant condors would always collect.The conditions for death could only exist with an offering of life. An excess.
Junok turned from the ruckus crowd beneath. Behind him sulked a smaller dwarven figure; lithe, quiet, wasting. It was his sister, Jillia Gjornsdottir. She had once been vibrant, fierce, full of life. She had been the great shield bearer of their house. She had walked in honor when the Bijol had called upon them for warriors for the Abyss Frontier. A half-million souls had taken up arms with her and sallied eastward under the rippling banner of the Great Condor. Billions were inspired when she commissioned on that perilous crusade. Like her they had wasted, sent into the dark places of mutagenogenic fauna and flora. To say the eastern front had been guerilla warfare was generous; it was simply terror. Dark, festering, useless terror.
Jillia’s hand idled around the rim of her chalice. It was not fine Augustain wine like that of her brothers, it was grnoost. Trails of black sulfuric bubbles danced slowly behind her finger in its roundelay. It was her only hand. The left side of her body and face had been completely boiled off by some crustaceous demon from the battles with the Abyss. Perhaps her sunken, cachexic features could be attributed to this healing, but her vacant stare betrayed deeper wounds.
The imperious dwarf could hardly look at her. Perhaps if her pain only existed in his periphery he could pretend that she was still the older sister who would visit him on summers from Concordat boarding school. The mischievous, charismatic drinking partner who could out flyte or out tipple any opposition. Yet now she could barely stomach her own existence, her grnoost, or perhaps how wasted their people had become after so much war and subjugation. She needed rest. Junok could only hope to give it. One last mission for his dear virtuous sibling. One last time serving beneath stretched black wings.
Junok could not truly tell his sister what was happening. The spies of the Bijol were numerous, some crawling and fleeting–almost invisibly–among the air and earth around him even now. She would have to know, have to adapt, have to trust him like she always had. She needed rest, all his people needed rest. Somehow, he was going to earn it for them.
He looked down at the vast crowd beneath. These were the last moments they would be spending on this planet, perhaps indefinitely. When the last Thruster Ball engine cooled, the last of the grnoost was drunk, they would all be boarding the capital ship which had careened overhead. There had been no celebratory flyby. Their taxi had landed and it would take each of them–all of them– across the galaxy to war.
Junok turned curtly to his sister, eyes painfully locking on her half-seared face. “Driga System. You must go. They… we… need to pass through the Augustinians. They don’t have to burn, remind them that. Remind them there is an easier way.”
Jillia’s gaze did not match his, it idled through, past him, to some other galaxy. “I already once burned for your easy way. You are not sending me as an ambassador, you are sending me as a hostage.”
“May the great wings shadow your rest, sister." Came the curt reply as his dark robed figure walked out, nose up. Whether his pitched head held tears back or aloof disdain was untellable. All she could see was the cheering countless dwarves enslaved, enraptured, at war.
