Chapter 8

‘Draw your spears!’ bellowed Malum, turning to the pack.

But the command was lost in a volley of bolts fired from the Thornatus’ Force Blasters. The earth ruptured with debris and chunks of stone ricocheting in all directions as the Vorox struggled to mobilize, many of the warriors kneeling to return fire at the approaching vehicle. Scrambling forward, Malum hurled himself at a nearby Zesk, wrapping his arms around the startled creature and taking the brunt of the primitive artillery. The impact singed his armor, leaving a dark residue across his shoulder.

Narrowing her beady eyes, the Elemental Lord shifted her form once more, dissipating among the crags of the ravine and reconstituting herself at the lip of the canyon. With a ferocious swipe of her hand, a swirling fist of sediment and shingle erupted from the ground beneath the vehicle, punching into the undercarriage with the force of a Skopio slamming down on its prey.

The Thornatus’ wheels could secure no purchase in the matted earth of the plateau. Perditus’ face whitened as he twisted in his seat, as though his very weight might counteract the will of an Elemental Lord. At the risk of overturning the vehicle entirely, he veered it sharply to the left, causing it to hang for a moment on three wheels. But the Thornatus could not correct itself at such velocity, tumbling over and smashing into the wall of the ravine.

Malum counted a dozen heartbeats as the chariot tumbled across the sand, knowing the whole spectacle must have taken no more than the split part of a second. He watched as the two Glatorian were flung from the wreckage, smoke already beginning to coil from the mangled mechanics, visible even from his vantage point. There was no sympathy at the sight of his former mentor, only a cold fury.

Turning to his aide, the exile saw a familiar fury in her narrow eyes that reaffirmed what he knew needed to be done.

‘Bring me their heads!’ he bellowed.

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Thoroughly stunned by the impact, Ackar staggered forward to pull Perditus clear, but the pilot shrugged him off, refusing the assistance and falling instead to his knees in a bewildered daze, hobbled by his injuries.

“My Thornatus!” he exclaimed in horror as sparks surged from ruptured circuitry. “She’s totaled!”

At the sight of the advancing Vorox, Ackar drew his Flame Sword without a flourish. It shone a dull gray, notched and rusted in places. It was the only blade between the pair.

“Forget the chariot!” yelled the elder Glatorian, shaky on his feet from his landing. “I’ll help you build another from scratch if we survive this!”

But Perditus was inconsolable, for he had at last seen the crimson form of Malum among the Vorox and had lost all willingness to fight. The sight chilled even Ackar, who felt suddenly as though he were walking on a razor’s edge. As the Vorox drew closer, it slowly occurred to the Glatorian that he had brawled in Atero Arena long enough to recognize a fight he could not win.

“We fall back,” he commanded, parrying a Thornax with the flat of his blade and feeling the metal almost torn from his hands. “There’s no honor to be won here!”

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Malum watched as the Vorox galloped down the slope on all-fours, hurling spears and Thornax at the attackers as they scurried for cover. Eventually, they abandoned the broken Thornatus and retreated.

“The Fire Army’s finest,” snorted the Elemental Lord as Ackar stole one final glance back before dipping beyond the slope. “Of all the armies of the Core War, it brings me the most pleasure to see their warriors flee.”

But Malum did not share in the revelry. The mere glimpse of the Glatorian had evoked a primal rage deep within him; his impossibly clean and garish armor was an offense to the eye. For many months now, he had been conscious that Raanu might learn of his unintended survival and seek to eliminate him. Never in his wildest imaginings would he have thought that his former instructor would have been sent to hunt him down.

“I sense a sandstorm brewing within you,” noted the Elemental Lord with a raised eyebrow.

“They did not deserve to make it this far,” growled Malum, eyes fixed on the battered Thornatus V9. “My Vorox… we struggled and sacrificed along a trail that they simply followed.”

“You are quick to anger but slow to confess a fault,” mused the former empress of the Sand Tribe with idle interest. “Many have come before them, seeking glory but lacking the capacity to achieve it. Only those who respect the Great Barren and its people may witness the truth buried beneath the surface.”

Finally relaxing his Flame Claws, the exile turned to assess the Vorox as they gradually returned up the slope. He realized in that moment, as they gazed expectantly at their new leader, that their submission was now perfect and complete. His aide now stood faithfully by his side with a sort of worship in her dark eyes.

“Then guide me, wise Elemental Lord,” he finally said, turning to the slope that still lay ahead. “For I have seen one world reduced to ruin by the complacency of its leaders and will not allow tragedy to befall my people a second time. Does Spherus Magna truly lie on the other side of this ravine?”

No reply came for a long and uncomfortable instant, until the Elemental Lord spoke once more, gesturing to the tip of the plateau.

“The Great Beings are beyond that peak…”

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Malum charged up the slope with all the strength he could muster, his powerful feet pounding into the shale. At his heels, the fastest Vorox were scrambling to keep pace with him, knowing only the urgency with which their champion ran.

As the gradient grew steeper, patches of weeds began to dot the slope, their thin shoots offering Malum and the Vorox support as they climbed. The exile had no time to pause, fearful that he might never get started again if he stopped.

When at last he dug his Flame Claws into the ridge at the tip of the incline, the champion hauled himself up and braced himself, unsure what to expect from a landscape unseen since the Shattering.

“This cannot be…” he gasped between ragged breaths.

The first thing he saw was a dry ocean bed spanning the horizon. Beyond that was the vast and incomprehensible void of an immeasurable crater, which possessed all the likeness of a wound cut across the surface of the planet. Great megaliths of bedrock and strata had been cleaved from the surface, visible even from his vantage point. The hollowed carcasses of ancient sea-creatures and Water Army battleships jutted out of the sand, blanched and scoured by the intensity of the sun.

At a loss for words, Malum stood before the unfathomable expanse, the words of Atakus echoing in his head:

“If they still exist to be found, then they will reside in their Citadel…”

If ever there had been a Citadel, it had surely been situated here, for the wreckage of a long-dead civilization now littered the impossible landscape.

“They were a proud people,” came the grating voice of the Elemental Lord of Sand, who had reconstituted herself at Malum’s side. “Science and philosophy and innovation were all virtues they held sacred, but, for all their combined wisdom, the Great Beings died off like Mountain Worms in a drought.”

“They’re… they’re all dead?” murmured the exile in disbelief, scanning the rubble he had traveled so far to find.

“Scattered to the wind,” chuckled the Elemental Lord. “A fortunate few took to the stars in the dying days of Spherus Magna. The rest succumbed to the Shattering in their golden palaces in this graveyard at the end of the world, little-knowing that they would be outlived several times over by the soldiers they had bred for a war that would prove to be their own destruction.”

Studying every line of the broken landscape, it slowly occurred to Malum that he had known the survivors would inherit a used world from the moment the Core War had been declared. The ruins of Spherus Magna and the decayed relics of former civilization had been everywhere: underfoot, underground, up mountains, immortalized in stories, but no living denizen of Bara Magna had gazed upon their source in 100,000 years.

“All their knowledge… all their secrets… gone?” he asked, unable to tear his eyes from the abyss that had at one time been soaked by the oceans of Aqua Magna.

“The sins of our ancestors rarely stay buried,” answered the self-proclaimed guardian of the Eastern Deadlands, her helmet conveying a rough approximation of anguish. “A great many of their blunders linger in this world yet.”

Watching as the Elemental Lord’s gaze fell upon the Vorox, her meaning was not lost on Malum. After centuries of clawing their way back to their feet after the planetary cataclysm, the Sand Tribe was nothing but a shadow of its former greatness, while the Agori still enjoyed the comforts of civilization built on the technology of their vastly superior predecessors.

“The regression…” murmured the exile, a deep crease forming on his brow. “I always thought it to have been natural - trauma from the Shattering.”

“A parting gift from the Great Beings,” snorted the Elemental Lord, extending a hand to stroke the helmet of Malum’s aide affectionately. “They tampered with my soldiers on a genetic level, attempting to cheat evolution and acclimatize them to the confines of the Great Barren, like fish to water. We were on the cusp of victory when they began to falter…”

Wherever Malum turned, it seemed as though the Great Beings were reaching out of deep history to inexorably curse their creations. It was a cycle of desolation and ruin, perpetuated by invisible architects long-since perished.

Feeling a righteous rage bubbling within his gut, he swore in that moment never to be shackled by the forces of destiny again.

“We are the Sand Tribe,” muttered the Elemental Lord darkly as her form began to erode in the wind, leaving Malum to grasp the reality.

“We are what remains…”