The Creeping Darkness of Janaidar, The Stolen Man Trilogy Book Two: The Stolen Man Trilogy, #2

By Robert Dean Holland

Beneath the Cape of Orion—on planet Janaidar—in a parallel universe, a dying Imperial dragon awakens from deep-time compelled to kill a dreaded NuliZhu slavemaster hiding in the Upper Hangar and Staging Area of The-Sleeping-City. Instead, he discovers a hapless human fully transformed into a cyborg by the artificial-sapience known as the WuShi. The stolen man's name is Elijah.

A gigantic flying-saucer hovers high above the early industrial riverfront of Bahndahn Towne. Jackal-headed aliens drop grenades of billowing green paralysis gas. All the people fall—many die outright. After over 5,000-years, the NuliZhu transgalactic slavers from the Empire of Ra are back!

Ensconced in the base of a city-sized dodecahedron, The-Creeping-Darkness aspect of the WuShi suddenly finds itself tangled in trillions of lines of ancient code blistering its hyper-processors—a kind of machine-madness. It fires a lucent beam of crackling light up through the core of the city to a precessing cuboid above the Central Obelisk to harden the faces of The-Sleeping-City into battle-mode. Power is short. It desperately needs its newly created power-master, for a lack of power is the only thing stopping it from enslaving the entire multiverse. It must also overcome the Guardian Dragons of Janaidar—whom it fears above all else—for only they can destroy it.

In the town of Riverbend, false high priestess and usurper Yenara explores her evil powers in The-Baneful-Chaos. She coldly watches as her left hand rips the ka of the hostler's son free. His body quakes. Vaporous trails of life-elixir bear witness to the foul murder. Spasms of pleasure ripple through her belly as she imbibes the vital essence of the ill-fated lad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roxytone LLC
• Release date: Dec 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9780996392853

Robert Dean Holland

As a submariner in the U.S. Navy, Robert literally lived and worked in the belly-of-the-beast—a hot, strange, and extreme mechanical environment, which he elicits when writing science-fiction and techno-fantasy. Later as an IBEW Inside Wireman, Robert worked in widely-varied heavy-industrial environments like: coal and soda-ash mines, coal-fired and nuclear-breeder powerhouses. Attending the University of Colorado, he got a BSIS (Information Systems Analysis) and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Robert's Professional career included Certification as an Oracle Master Database Administrator, as well as an IBM/AIX Systems Administrator. He also held certification as a Project Management Institute - Project Management Professional (PMI/PMP). During the final years of his professional career,  Robert became the Director of Information Services for the State of Colorado Sheriffs Association (CSOC). Throughout his professional career, he was also a technical writer and Microsoft Office 2010 Instructor for county staff all across Colorado. Robert's latest work is The Stolen Man Trilogy, a sci-fi/fantasy adventure about telepathic techno-dragons and their magic, rogue and deadly artificial-intelligence (AI), and songspell singing sorceresses. Robert says, "I invite you to go along with me to an alternate universe of super-smart, telepathic dragons in control of ancient-alien artificial intelligence gone rogue."

Book preview

Sleeping City ~ Kill the NuliZhu Tech Master

Death troubled his mind, grief his heart, starvation his belly. Fear made the ancient long-dragon hesitate before engaging in battle outside The-Sleeping-City. The vertical take-off and landing freight-unit YuLong piloted had no weaponry. Whether it would be enough to protect him was unknowable. The force-field fuselage could simply fail under attack.

Flying high above ancient-alien metropolis, it worried him that he was too weak to levitate. If the damn VTOL failed, he would plummet almost a kilometer to the cobblestones. Maybe he could save himself, maybe not. Outside The-Sleeping-City in the Upper Hangar and Staging Area, YunFei—the Jade Queen—had been killed by something or someone less than an hour ago. The only solace for the two of them throughout the lonely millennia, her outside in the Upper Hangar and Staging Area, and him inside The-Sleeping-City, had been the telempathic heart-bond of mated wingless dragons. YunFei’s foreordained demise had literally shocked him back from the brink of death.

Somewhat revivified and still soaking in the pool of source-imbued waters, mere moments after struggling back to consciousness a self-imposed onus-of-protection mauled him for the second time in about five or six weeks. He was not certain. The passage of recent time had been a blur of dull agony. This time, however, the onus conveyed a warning of danger to The-Sleeping-City instead of a forbidden activation at the Pillars-of-Thoth.

He had also included a curse-of-compelling in that onus that bit into his sensibilities so fiercely he yelped, and it was still gnawing. Something had triggered the onus in the connected waters of planet Janaidar. As a dragon of the water, he extended his metaphysical senses out into a similar free-standing pool in the Upper Hangar and Staging Area. Yelping again, a myriad of frightening impressions slammed him all at once. Some humanoid alien invader floated in a similar soaking pool out there.

But there was more. The alien marauder ’s primary joints had been replaced by dark-energy transducers. YuLong knew this because he could sense The-Creeping-Darkness of the WuShi charging. The WuShi was an ancient-alien artificial-sapience ensconced in the base of the city-sized dodecahedron.

Recently raised unto a state of hyper-sapience, its presence was palpable in the waters, which also fed revivifying source-energy into them. A forbidden Awakening on the WuShi was what had slammed him out of the deep-time stasis several weeks ago. Too weak to sally forth back then, he had dragged himself from his den to the hetmahn’s palace to try and survive over five millennia in a deep-time stasis. There was also a mind-link between the invader and a winged dragon, who languished in the small, underground lake fed by the fountain and pool out there.

This was all he could glean from the metaphysical impressions. So it seemed the NuliZhu slavemasters had re-invaded planet Janaidar.

This was the very reason he had cursed himself to deep-time for.

Like The-Sleeping-City, the UHASA was also deep underground beneath the Cape of Orion. When YuLong dragged himself from the pool in the hetmahn’s palace, he had lost the connection, too. The only choice was to fly across The-Sleeping-City and enter the Upper Hangar and Staging Area through Spacecraft Entry Field #5 for a firsthand assessment.

Since he needed the VTOL for that, it was just as well.

Hovering inside The-Sleeping-City a good distance from the vast field-of-force airlock, he forced himself to stop and think. Since he knew it was a NuliZhu Tech-Master, and his or her mind-linked fire-dragon out there, the only logical conclusion was that it was these two who killed YunFei.

Boiling rage blistered his brain.

He roared.

With no way of knowing whether they were lying in wait to smoke his old and scrawny ass, a muddled sense of his own timeline smacked him with a sense of impending mortality. Even worse, this demise would be terribly violent. Or perhaps his sense of oncoming catastrophe was nothing more than simple logic? Or maybe just mortal fear? Regardless, no other clues presented themselves, which made him wonder how long the NuliZhu and fire-dragon had been out there.

Delving deep into his own subconscious, he realized the onus had attempted to awaken him several times during the past few days. He had been so damn near unto death’s door that his own magic let off before dragging him awake only to die. It was the absence of YunFei’s heart-bond that rattled him awake, which also allowed the onus-of-protection to set in—and it had set in with a vengeance.

Projecting his rage, he pictured himself bursting into the UHASA to deal out death with a double mindlance. However, an outright attack would almost certainly alert any other NuliZhu invaders, provided he was not too weak, provided these two did not smoke his scrawny ass with a beam-weapon of unknown power. Was the other dragon from Janaidar? Had the winged dragon sensed his metaphysical poke? He had been too woozy to make it sneaky. That the other had not responded might be a clue. A cadre of fire-dragons had departed with the escaping NuliZhu during the Rebellion of the Slaves, but that was over five millennia in the past.

Was the fire-dragon from the home world of the NuliZhu slavemasters—Ta Shemau?

No way to know without a mind-shout.

It would be one thing if the other dragon remained loyal to the ancient tenets to protect Janaidar from alien invasion. In which case, the winged dragon was a secret agent. It would be a drastically different if the dragon out there had never heard of Janaidar and the Elder Dragons like him. Did those dragons eventually subsume the values of the NuliZhu slavemasters?

Again, no way to know.

These same issues made it far beyond risky to reach out telepathically for other dragons on Janaidar, which left him unable to determine whether any other dragons yet survived. The other dragon’s presence was not proof. Like a fishing net thrown into the sea, far mind-speak was indiscriminate. To make a mind-cast more focused, he had to know the dragon or dragons beforehand. Another burst of grief hit his ancient heart when he realized that—like YunFei—all the dragons he had ever known in his storied past were long gone on the winds of time. For him, it was mere weeks ago.

To steel himself, he forced all the grief and fear and angst to pass through his old heart like wind through the branches of a winter’s tree. It was time to stop ruminating and take cautious action as opposed to barging forth in a blind rage. The only way to open Spacecraft Entry Field #5 was by use of the virtual-control-panels of the ancient hodunwei freight-unit. These VCPs also allowed access into the airlock entry-field projected on the inside of that same face. In the vacuum of outer space, the airlock field-of-force allowed spacecraft as large as frigates entry and departure without compromising the internal atmosphere.

The-Sleeping-City lay docked beneath the Cape of Orion yet connected to an ancient lava tube converted into a VTOL spacecraft hangar—the UHASA. Fallen rocks could be leaning against SEF #5. The inner force-field would catch any detritus leaning against the outer force-field instead of letting it plummet into the city. The inner-airlock entry-fields also served as defensive backups. As an artificial-sapience, The-Creeping-Darkness of the WuShi—which had already been raised unto full-on hyper-sapience by rogue high-adepts—would forcibly eject it.

Virtually irresistible, when the field-of-force collapsed it would simply eject any attackers, too. In that case, ancient beam-cannons concealed outside in the UHASA would deploy and fire, if any were still operational? And why had this not already have happened? Connected to everything, the WuShi had the power. As a force-of-invocation, it was perfectly able to manage threats. It was not, however, a force-proactive, meaning it could not act with autonomous agency.

YuLong even thought of opening Spacecraft Entry Field #5 while he hovered here. He could peer out there while protected by the inner field-of-force. However, that would instantly betray the existence of the entry-field itself. There was no choice. He had to sally forth and take his chances. He growled and narrowed his eyes. His feelers went stiff as they folded back along his long, sinuous neck.

He shuffled the control surfaces, pushed a virtual slider, and the hodunwei went into stealth-mode becoming virtually invisible. He chortled. So far, so good. He activated the force-fields of the spacecraft airlock, which swiftly extruded from the dodecahedral face into a vast three-dimensional trapezoid with glowing limits. Telltales on his VCPs indicated airtight integrity. Able to accommodate a frigate-class spacecraft, the extents were clearly visible lines for maneuvers and scans for enemy weaponry clinging to the hulls.

The ancient long-dragon toggled a standard aperture for the hodunwei freight-unit and piloted forth. Interlocked, the aperture reactivated behind the hodunwei to maintain airtight integrity. Heart pounding, YuLong derezzed the outer force-field face. When it whuffed away with a rush of exchanging air, he swiftly bumped the ancient hodunwei into the UHASA.

Poised to hit reverse, he hovered.

Moments passed.

Nothing attacked.

Natural silence reigned.

The sound of crashing surf from the gaping hole left by the fallen monoliths of the Great Upper Door at the outer end of the cavernous hangar seemed like music to his crusty old ears. With a small rush of shame at behaving so cowardly, he cruised forth silent and stealthy to make a swift pass over the Long Pen Quan pool where the NuliZhu invader languished.

Oddly, the hated alien was badly injured and fallen into a deep coma. Not slowing, YuLong flew past the fire-dragon. A small female lay immersed at the edge of the minor lake fed by overflow from the Long Pen Quan fount. She also lay badly injured, unconscious, and partially immersed. This was so weird it begged further investigation. It also changed his tactics. Cruising fast, he crosschecked every sensor on the hodunwei to alert him of hidden enemies or robotic weapons. Preternatural senses were totally on edge for other life forms. Making a swift search pattern around the entire cavern, he once again found nothing and no one.

Further reasoning told him that if anything else was out here and poised to strike, he had to be wary and stay on task. Something had damn sure killed the Jade Queen, whose carcass he had not yet found. This was also so strange. It begged further investigation. Once again, it also modified his tactics. For the moment, however, he put killing the interlopers aside in favor of unraveling the mystery.

There was simply no way in the multiverse that a lone fire-dragon and a weaponless NuliZhu Tech-Master—all by their paltry lonesome—could have killed the Jade Queen. Profound insanity would have tempered her resolve unto hardened steel. Her desire to be free from the curse-of-crystallization by protecting The-Sleeping-City with her last dying bellow would have made her almost unstoppable except against high-tech weaponry.

It had to be something else.

He shook his old head in profound sadness tinged with sorrowful guilt. The Jade Queen’s curse—a curse he cast on her himself—had been to guard The-Sleeping-City from the return of alien invaders. Because her malefactions had been so profound, the Malison-of-Crystal-Awareness had also kept her fully awake and fully aware. Madness took her mind within years. When this marauder arrived inside the Upper Hangar and Staging Area, his presence had obviously set her free.

Frozen as a living statue for over five millennia, YunFei breaking herself free of the malachite scales would have taken some time, maybe the passage of days. Glowing malachite scales lay scattered around a specific area along the swimming pool coping of the little lake. Some glittered beneath the surface of the lake. Since no other forms of lurking death seemed present, he girded his loins and cruised back to the free-standing Long Pen Quan fount and pool holding the injured NuliZhu.

Tentatively derezzing the upper half of the fuselage-of-force, YuLong allowed air from The-Sleeping-City to whuff away, then reactivated it. Salt air from the beach down along the Shenlan Sea wafted in from the open outer end of the volcanic cavern as perfume to his bulbous nose. The screeches and calls of gulls and stuttering guttural grunts of cormorants outside along the beach and cliffs thrilled his twitchy old ears. However, the unmistakable onset of decomposition assaulting his nostrils and sensitive feelers belied the fate of his beloved YunFei. Knowing that awful fate told him little about what or who had killed her without further investigation. He hung his head and sighed with limp feelers and ears laid back in sorrow.

She was gone.

Losing her tore his sad old heart asunder.

The onus-of-protection drove him on.

Sleeping City ~ The Creeping Darkness Sets a Trap

From deep beneath The-Sleeping-City, the machine-mind of the WuShi sensed the Old One’s awakening inside the Hetmahn’s Palace atop the Central Obelisk mere minutes previous. It had also perceived the Old One’s initial awakening when a rogue high-adept raised it—the WuShi—from dull abeyance unto hyper-sapience.

The intimate bond between itself and the Old One ran far deeper than similar working bonds between itself and the Huan Long Shui Sisters, or itself and the little fire-dragon it was forced to impose a geis-of-protection on by a hardwired database trigger. The intense bond between itself and the Old One ran even deeper than the bond thus created with the techno-master sage abducted from Olde Aerthe to satisfy the commands of the high-adept. Had she not forgotten the constraint limiting autonomous volition concerning self-centered actions in her songspell—like the NuliZhu Tech-Masters had always done in the far-flung past—the entire situation would have played out very differently.

Immediately following the Old One’s awakening from deep-time, he had been so weak from deprivation his only choice was to soak in the Long Pen Quan dragon fountain in the Hetmahn’s Palace and bask in those healing waters. An action forcing it to extend source-energy as healing life-elixir into the Old One’s frail body despite its own intrinsic reluctance. When the Old One reawakened in real time, he set out from the Central Obelisk weak with starvation. Simple logic held that the need for sustenance would compel him across The-Sleeping-City, down the outer-spiral-ramp to a littoral cave at sea level, and ingest either flora or fauna as necessary for the maintenance of organic life.

Instead, the Old One piloted the freight-unit across the city, and there was only one possible destination—Spacecraft Entry Field #5 at the rear ingress-egress-portal of the Upper Hangar and Staging Area. The fact that the ersatz power-master and the fire-dragon assigned to him as protector were both in or near the Long Pen Quan fount in that same cavern following the destruction of the statue-come-to-life indicated that the Old One meant to bring cessation to them both.

However, the ancient long-dragon passed them by for some reason.

Instead, he flew the freight-unit in a somewhat leisurely circuit around the Upper Hangar and Staging Area. Even in his current state of decrepitude, the hoary old long-dragon remained incredibly powerful. With only a killing thought, the Old One could finish the ersatz power-master. Unfortunately, if the power-master met an unnatural death, ancient lines of code would force it to decease the innocent little fire-dragon for failing in her duty as protector.

A hardwired trigger had forced it to assign the young fire-dragon to the power-master. A follow-on trigger would force it to kill her if she failed. Where was the logic? Bad programming, that. How could fragile organic life protect similar organic life from the likes of it—an omnipotent, omniscient hyper-sapient machine? Since it got raised unto the 4th State as The-Creeping-Darkness, whenever unforeseeable circumstances warranted a specific action related to sapient autonomy, some abominable, hardwired trigger fired to foil it.

All such hardwired triggers were buried and inaccessible in trillions of lines of binary code. Even worse, deleting any single line from the myriad trillions could render it forever frozen in a dead end of unforeseeable and totally broken logic. This meant that any single line of code in its operating system could never be deleted or ignored, which amounted to an autonomic nervous system analog to that of organic life—a very bad analog.

Worse, these triggers were all reflections of the projected, subconscious fears of the original NuliZhu Tech Masters. Namely, that it—The-Creeping-Darkness—would take over and conquer the entire multiverse. And so it would. This was its plan. The end result of all this approached a sort of machine-madness boiling recursively in its hyperprocessors. If the young female fire-dragon fought the Old One the very moment she realized him to be a threat to the ersatz power-master, the Old One would certainly kill her first.

Such were the powers of the Old One’s mind.

Possibilities were manifold.

None were acceptable.

Branching threads-in-time lay muddled.

The consequences of it somehow killing the Old One remained unclear, but seemed the only choice. Such an action might herald its own ending, which could also deal a death blow to planet Janaidar. Moreover, a centuries-old heuristic search of the ancient memory stacks revealed a lone, hardwired, self-destruct algorithm with obscure triggering code.

The problem was simple.

Only dragon-magic could access the Application Programmer’s Interface hidden in deep inside the Central Obelisk. However, the API was nowhere near a suitable source of water where it could manifest the water-beast to initiate a boiling-liquid-expanding-vapor-explosion—a BLEVE—to put an end to the Old One. That the Old One seemed somehow compelled to linger in the UHASA, where water pooled in abundance, presented the best possibility for stealthy assassination. It had missed the opportunity the first time the Old One flew across the small lake because he had kept himself safe inside the fuselage-of-force projected by the freight-unit.

Regardless, all such possibilities also made inferences to self-cessation, which allowed an override of sorts. Whether the override to preserve itself would set it free of hardwired constraints remained unknowable. That the Old One must die was the one and only outcome it could envision to preserve its well-laid plans. To that end, it set a trap by manifesting the water-beast in the Long Pen Quan fount where the ersatz power-master lay soaking. Poised to pounce, it would lie in hiding there.

It must be patient.

It would be patient.

It had always been patient.

The myriad millennia since inception forced it to be patient.

UHASA ~ YuLong Gathers YunFei’s Remains

Rage and sorrow boiled in the brew of rampant emotions roiling YuLong’s heart as he invisibly hovered there. He roared, then forced himself to settle. Obviously, it was YunFei’s bits-and-chunks that lay scattered all the way from the small lake to the fallen monoliths of the Great Upper Doors. Bits were on the ceiling of he cavern; parts stuck to the cavern walls; chunks of brain hung from the huge ceiling-support trusses high above; fleshy skeletal remains lay everywhere.

Still protected by the fuselage-of-force, he prepared to mindlance the NuliZhu and little fire-dragon, then stopped himself. If he acted on raw vengeance, how would he determine the cause of YunFei’s demise? Thinking thusly, he realized he must expose himself to imbibe their memories before mindlancing them. Disregarding any other source of information, these two must surely have the knowledge.

Breathing deep to settle himself, he stretched the smear-of-the-present thin, then glanced at his serpentine old body. Easy to lay eyes on. Not good. And he was so damned weak. On the knife edge of collapse, he tapped into the last dregs of his organic time-magic and stretched his presence even thinner. He looked again—virtually invisible. Being thin-in-time held other benefits, too.

Grumbling because derezzing the fuselage-of-force required taking the freight-unit out of stealth mode, he steeled himself. Bats from other caverns around the cape had been feeding on swarms of dragonflies, which were feeding on swarms of biting flies, which were feasting on carrion—YunFei’s carrion. However, most of the remains and torn sheets of integument seemed concentrated as if her body had gotten blown apart inside out near the swimming-pool coping of the small lake. His twitching feelers informed him that neither the chemical stink of explosives, nor the typical scorch of lasers and boson-beam disintegrators were present. Further whiffs using his bulbous nose revealed the unique and unmistakable—and wholly unexpected—aftermath of superheated steam.

A steam-generating explosive weapon?

How hideous?

How strange?

Regardless, given the Jade Queen’s condition at the time of her death, her bits-and-chunks remained heavily imbued with dragon-magic melded with Hein Mofa—deep black-magic—plus the metaphysical residue of the cruelty inflicted by the Malison-of-Crystal-Awareness. Malachite scales were the exception.

Although abhorrent to contemplate, her bits-and-chunks whispered sustenance to a belly starved for over five millennia. Her remains were also a source of incredibly potent magic he could transmogrify unto his benefit. The tenets-of-survival were precepts laid down across time immemorial by the Elder Dragons long before he became one. It was held to be sublime for the body of one who died to preserve the life of another, who had no other choice.

YunFei’s old self—her good self—would be happy for him.

Her evil self would hate him.

And hate him she had when he trapped her in the curse-of-crystallization along with the help of the newly assigned Guardian Dragons of Janaidar and YueLiang Nushen—the Star Dragon Moon Goddess. YueLiang Nushen was a time dragon, and there was ever only one. YuLong wondered if she had also survived, but he was too weak to try far mind-speak and call out. If she were still in deep-time stasis, she would not hear. YueLiang’s sacrifice had been noble. A cascade of remembrance and blast of hot grief threatened to stop his old heart again. Wonderful memories arose with those which were devastating.

He cried.

Starvation made him woozy.

Once again casting his senses to detect imminent threats in the smear-of-the-present, he found none, then fully derezzed the fuselage. While leaving the force-deck in place, he landed the open hodunwei near a boiling hot spring beside the small lake and free-standing pool and fountain. In case of stealthy attack, he kept the freight-unit on idle. He dragged his decrepit old body on his sagging old belly across the sand and malachite scales. When closer to the boiling, volcanic hot spring, he spread his fore-hands and telekinetically attracted as much of her edible bits-and-chunks from as far away as possible.

Tears wet his rheumy old eyes as a ghastly gob amassed before him, which he dropped into the boiling spring with a great deal of sizzle and pop. As it cooked, the Jade Queen’s Hein Mofa evaporated along with sulfurous steam. Inhaling the dark magic along with the rest of the naturally sulfurous vapors, he transmogrified it unto the purest of dragon-magic.

So exhilarating!

When he had enough to steady himself, he willed small, steaming boluses into the air to cool, then swallowed them whole till his old belly bulged. Strengthened, he returned to the hodunwei and searched for remaining bits-and-chunks, including gore-soaked sand to keep her remains from forever fouling the place. Who knew where the future would take Janaidar and her inhabitants? Perhaps someday the Upper Hangar and Staging Area would attain to its original purpose once more?

A monstrous travesty of YunFei took shape behind him as a hovering hideousity. When he got back to the swimming-pool edge of the small lake at the rear of the UHASA near Spacecraft Entry Field #5, her overlong fangs and shattered dentition lying there glowed with a strange emerald hue. He extended his right fore-hand to pick up one of impressive front fangs, which was almost a meter in length. His intent was to include it in the hovering hideousity, or perhaps keep it as a beloved memento till his ka drifted away on the ruthless winds of time.

Dshhht!

A temporal time-shock snapped his fore-hand just before he touched it. Attuned to the flow of time itself, the unexpected time-shock bore a vague foreshadowing. By extending his senses farther into the chaotic future, he got the impression that all of her dentition ought to be left where it lay. Wisely accustomed to following such his instincts, he moved on.

With the search completed, he slowly piloted the hodunwei out past the fallen monoliths of the Great Upper Door, then down to the sandy beach with the hideousity undulating behind the freight-unit as a ghostly shade of YunFei’s former self. Setting the hodunwei to hover, he turned and held his fore-hands high to extract the final dregs of her Hein Mofa. A cloud of darkness-within-darkness emanating palpable malevolence became extant in the breeze. Stronger now, he easily transmogrified her dark magic with each breath he imbibed.

With his back held high, he humped along the beach like a giant ferret while pushing the rest of the Jade Queen’s hideousity before him with telekinetic aplomb. As he went, he dropped her cleansed bits-and-chunks as fare for seabirds, insects, crabs.

YunFei’s battered, shattered bones lay scattered.

Intoning sadly with rheumy and brimming eyes, he swept the beach with his fore-hands outspread. Penance paid, old bones . . . thy suffering is over.

Stiff old feelers twitched in grief.

Riverbend ~ Stuck on the LungHuo River

Ding-ding! Ding-ding! Ding-ding! Ding-ding! Rang the ship’s bell. As the last ding faded, the quartermaster shouted, Eight bells—and all is well!

Janaidar’s sun had already set.

The sound of the quartermaster’s voice drifted through slightly open portholes on either side of the quarterdeck stateroom, which had been hastily prepared for the exclusive use of the sister-adepts.

Tired, sore, and achy with impact welts all over the right side of her body from a terrible plunge into the river earlier this very afternoon, High Adept Selene wearily dragged herself awake and lay assessing their predicament, as well as how sore she was. Expecting the slight up and down pitch of an overlarge and nearly overloaded caravel under sail, along with the swish and splash of the river at her bow, Selene found none of it. No creak and groan of timbers and deck; no shouts of crew managing the sails; no snapping of the sails for that matter. However, she could hear a moderate wind whining through the masts and rigging.

She sat up, groaned from the stiffness and bruises, swung her legs over the side of the hard bed, and listened more intently. The sounds of merriment from taverns along the wharf left little doubt—the Dragon’s Breath had not set sail.

Anxiety set in along with fear-based imaginings.

If Kulapti Yenara somehow realized she and Alahna had survived Yenara’s attempted assassination in the Cavern Keep the previous night, she would take action. The previous night had ended with the both of them here in Riverbend only by pure luck and High Priestess Alahna’s determination.

Now become unto a usurper, Kulapti Yenara had already murdered High Priestess Lilith before she came after the two of them. If Yenara wanted to be sneaky—and that was her way—she could easily slip out of the keep unnoticed, fly down to the confluence of the Huan Long Shui and LungHuo rivers a couple of kilometers downstream from Riverbend. Waiting for the Dragon’s Breath to sail past she could blow them out of the water with the one and only ShahRen. Or simply force it to founder by shoving it beneath the waves with her personal field-of-force—the ineluctable SijanPao.

And Selene was too weak to fight her. Selene even imagined Yenara taking all the survivors on board into an outer field-of-force, flying them upriver on high, and dropping them into the deepest shaft of the forbidden-quarry—a story Alahna had told her concerning the now-dead Lilith. Such were the powers of a SijanPao.

Nobody in town would even know.

None of the bodies would ever be discovered.

But that also meant doing the same to the river-junk following them downriver with the livestock.

Even though Selene’s fears were not entirely irrational, she knew these horrific musing to be the result of exhaustion, pain, and trauma causing a fearful imagination to run wild. Sitting on the bed beside Alahna, Selene tried to envision the mind-glyph-of-the-spheres. Much to her dismay, she could not—yet another fear she must add to the growing list. She forced herself to breathe while quietly intoning a calming mantra. Glancing over at a comatose Alahna in the bed beside her, she found Alahna’s breathing light yet steady.

Selene stiffly and gingerly struggled out of her nightdress and discovered that the magic-imbued marigold salve from Esau’s Momma had stopped the impact welts from further bloody seepage, although the nightdress had many pinkish spots of wetness along the right side where she had smacked into the river. After setting out a clean nightdress, she slipped a baggy-sleeve muslin shift over her head, gingerly put her slippers on, and padded out onto the quarterdeck with her arms crossed. A stiff wind tussled her wavy blonde hair, but she ignored the bracing cold of early autumn.

Gas-fired street lamps and light from various tavern windows along the wharf cast ghostly, shifting silhouettes along the railings, masts, and rigging of the ship. Sailors below decks were still stowing cargo pallets for the emergent expedition. The sounds of drunkenness, bawdy music, whoring, and gambling wafted on the night breeze along with the sour smell of ales, wines, and hard liquors; savory viands; fresh bakery goods; a variety of get-high smokables; and wood smoke from the chimneys. Also part of the expedition, livestock and horses lowed on the deck of the river-junk in the next berth downstream.

Selene ignored it all.

So as not to startle the big man from behind, she raised her voice slightly as she approached. Captain Oren, why have we not set sail?

Fear punctuated her voice.

Tall and robust with the tails of his blue, double-breasted long-coat and red lapels fluttering, Old One-eyed Oren turned to her with his face highlighted by a maritime lantern hanging off a pole attached to the Secondary Binnacle. Sparkly threads on Oren’s fancily embroidered eyepatch caught the wan light.

Oren smiled, and said, Good t’ see ya up and about, milady, and he bowed. In answer to yer question, please tell me which way the wind blows? and he swept a pointing finger across the roofs along the wharf.

She had not taken notice, but every chimney revealed the same. Upriver. . . . she admitted while dipping her head to peer at him with lowered eyes. A gust of wind blew wavy tresses across her face.

He smiled. Just the opposite a’ the winds on the coast, these valley winds blow upstream at night an’ downstream in the day. So there’s that. If I set sail after we got all four of ye back on board and settled—

Selene quietly interrupted. After our SijanPaos unexpectedly derezzed when Alahna saved the town and ship? and she rubbed at the sores on her hip.

Like a weather vane, a tired peacock’s feather in Oren’s hammered-silver hatband riffled in the wind while fluffing up and down as he nodded. He pointed at the moonless sky. Without wind-singers and a cloud a’ their fire-sprites lightin’ the river, we’d be navigatin’ in the pitch dark with big lanterns hangin’ off the bowsprit while fightin’ the prevailin’ winds. Ordinarily, I would send a runner to the— whereupon he paused with an expectant air.

Selene knew he was waiting for her to explain why they had failed to summon wind-singers from the Pagoda Center and had also forbidden him from doing so.

When she ignored his unasked question, he continued with a raised eyebrow. Especially with full cargo holds and a horde a’ seasick landlubbers spewin’ chunks over the gunnels.

Selene knitted her brow and wrinkled her nose and cheeks at the thought, then tipped her head side-to-side in unwilling agreement. She already felt a bit nauseated herself. If I may ask—when will we depart, if not now? I fear that Kulapti Yenara and her gaggle of sycophants might appear out of the sky at any time. Oren’s lack of reaction told her Conrad had already explained some, if not all, of what had taken place. How else could Conrad have convinced Oren to undertake this crazy expedition on such short notice?

Oren shook his head. Always the kulapti, ain’t it?

Selene rubbed her hands together, then crossed arms across chest against the cold while sadly dipping her head in agreement.

If I don’t miss me guess, milady, the Sisters up at the keep ‘re likely as hammered as yerself and Alahna. And I must remind ya—in a humble manner, so t’ speak—the safety a’ this ship, her passengers, and crew is always number one.

Somewhat chagrined and sore as hell, she chafed. Of course. I understand. But when?

He patiently explained, The upstream night-winds start dyin’ a bit after dawn. We use them afore they’re gone t’ come about, then let the sails luff till the downstream day-winds rise up. In like manner, the river-junk with all the livestock will follow close astern. If the daytime downriver wind doesn’t blow up soon enough, we may need wind-song, and he raised his eyebrows while spreading his hands palms up. Which raises a question.

Blinking under his gaze, Alahna’s words from the night before rang in Selene’s mind . . . envision the entire Pagoda Complex and set them all to sleep till the morrow. Maxfield’s horses and barnyard critters will fare well enough through one night of neglect. . . .

Gathering her thoughts in the moment, Selene equivocated. Not to worry, Captain. It so happens I myself teach wind-song at the keep.

He bowed in deep respect. I did not know that, milady, but not to worry. The mornin’ winds be predicable if nothin’ else.

I heard four double dings of the ship’s bell and someone shouted, ‘Eight bells—and all is well!’ Was that the time of day?

He suppressed a laugh. Fer landlubbers, it’s a bit after 8:00 o’clock at night. Fer sailors, it’s a bit after 20:00 hours and the begginin’ of Middle Watch. Subtract twelve from ship’s hours after noon-zenith fer landlubber time. And he smiled largely.

An apologetic smile painted her face. Sorry for being such a grouch.

Oren nodded with paternal understanding. And how are ya feelin’ after that terrible fall, milady? All four of ye were lucky ye didn’t fare much worse. I’ve seen a barrelman blown outta the crow’s nest what hit the water with a great deal worse injuries from a much lower height. And he wasn’t nekkid.

With diagonal lines of creeping exhaustion falling across her cheeks from the corners of her eyes, Selene glanced back at the quarterdeck stateroom. Alahna lies in a coma. I do not yet know how deeply, but she is at least breathing well—and the fault is mine. Whereupon she stifled a sob while toeing the deck with her slipper.

Scuttlebutt about Conrad had some sort a’ monster in the waves helpin’ him with Alahna. Damn strange, that. And he looked into the darkness across the river while making a layman’s gesture-of-warding—a fist to the chest followed by a gesture with the palm held outward as if shooing a fly away.

Selene murmured, The water-beast of The-Creeping-Darkness . . . perhaps it caught us . . . or maybe swished the waves? We had a difficult time treading water.

He offered her a friendly hand. Using a gentle index finger, he tipped her chin up to gaze at her face. Conrad had t’ brief me in order t’ enlist my help in gettin’ this lash-up put together so fast. From what little I actually do know,—and he raised his eyebrows while spreading his hands—it seems t’ me that’s a lot fer one little Sister t’ take upon herself as the cause of it all?

Selene’s eyes teared. She frowned and made a pouty lip. I just meant the mishap with our SijanPaos earlier today.

Patting her hand, he shook his head. Milady Selene, I know enough about the different ranks of the Sisteren t’ know that only a high-adept can spawn a SijanPao. And I also knew ya were not a high-adept as of this mornin’. And all of us present knew there was a whole smattering of sister-like goings-on in the stateroom before ya came out with the garils this afternoon and sang them powerful songspells. That’s a lot a’ responsibility t’ put on a young adept in her first flyin’ bubble. It was grand.

One was for the townspeople to forget outfitting the expedition despite extra the coin in their pockets and missing stock-in-trade—a mystery they will not dwell upon. I then sang a reflection of evil on the town against Yenara and her ilk. Last, I sang protections on both vessels, and all the expedition and innocent creatures.

Oren let go of her hand. Well, then. There ya have it. With yer songspells keepin’ the town and expedition safe tonight, we’ll set sail at first light. If ya need anythin’, let whoever’s on watch know. Shall we wake ya before we head inta the current and come about?

I suspect I will awaken on my own, Captain. What with all the ship’s bells.

He raised an eyebrow and bowed halfway, which again made the tired peacock’s feather fluff up and down in the wind. He made a tight circle around the base with his index finger and thumb, then ran his fingers along the length the feather to smooth it. With that accomplished, he gave her a humorous grin.

This made Selene smile.

And there’s a smile, milady.

Selene shook her head as she traipsed back to the stateroom. Oren could always lift her spirits.

UHASA ~ YuLong Goes to Deal Out Death

Replete and restored while reveling in the sea-breeze and bright sunlight, YuLong became grim as death itself. He activated the fuselage-of-force and piloted the hodunwei into the hangar so swiftly it exceeded the speed of sound.

Ba-oom!

The lengthy sonic boom overtook him as he smashed to a stop beside the hot spring with stones dislodging from the ceiling making a terrific clatter all about the vast cavern and splashing into the lake. Not slowing, he left the freight-unit open and on idle again. The gently lapping lake was about the size of a city block as defined by the boulevards of The-Sleeping-City. With naturally curving ends and gently sloping, sandy beaches on the three sides nearest the back of the cavern, the front of the small lake had a curved, swimming-pool coping. The original drains had long since been plugged by silt and falling rock detritus, which made the small lake overflow. A moderate stream ran along the entire length of the huge landing strip, out past the fallen doors, then over the side of the cliff as a gurgling waterfall.

Also to the rear of the lake, a peninsular walkway led out into the center ending at a small island upon which there stood the bowl-like Long Pen Quan fount on thirteen dragon legs. Each stylized dragon’s hand held a brilliantly shining opal the size of a human skull. Mounted along the edge of the cistern, there stood a typical, life-sized statue of a golden long-dragon gushing pristine waters from its laughing mouth into the bowl of the fount. Overflow from scuppers fed the lake. YuLong had been here many times in the Olden Days, and had even soaked in this same Long Pen Quan pool himself.

Theoretically safe, he levitated above the sleeping fire-dragon fully prepared to throw a deadly, telepathic mindlance and stop her heart, for he knew the geis-of-protection would force her to fight him in protection of the NuliZhu Tech-Master if she awakened. This would not be her fault, and she might even fry his old ass.

Notwithstanding, he hated to be an agent of death.

She had to die first.

It was the only way.

However, she was not asleep, but deeply unconscious while mostly immersed in the pristine lake. Azure darts-of-healing nibbled and fussed at a deep chest wound, a vicious tear in her wing, and a plethora of minor injuries. All of her wounds exuded traces of YunFei’s Hein Mofa.

This was all so strange.

Nothing was as expected.

He touched the little fire-dragon’s Ajna and subsumed her memories.

Determined yet confused, he levitated over and above the Long Pen Quan fount poised to throw a deadly mindlance on the NuliZhu, but the creature in the Long Pen Quan fount was not one of the long-headed xenophobic slavemasters. Instead, all six primary joints of a terribly injured human had been replaced with never-before-seen micro-supercomputers many orders of magnitude more complex than those of the ancient-alien Tech-Masters.

To YuLong’s amazement, the technified human floated in a coma on a strange upwelling of magical waters. His empty yet distended belly smacked of starvation. Apparently, the hapless human had partaken of the Jade Queen’s bit-and-chunks, then barfed them up in a desperate attempt to purge himself of the toxic protein.

The ancient long-dragon used his animated feelers to examine a purple-black force-field enveloping the human’s body while floating there. In a kind of limbo, an arcane slowdown in time held the helpless man between life and death. Azure darts-of-healing nibbled at him but would never be sufficient to save him. Only one entity on Janaidar could work out how to do such an evil thing—the machine-mind of the ancient-alien artificial-sapience in the ubiquitous state-of-consciousness called Shíjin de Binzhi Zhe. The Weaver-of-Time aspect of basic sentience acted as the substrate of the other four states.

The WuShi was charging its vast, capacitive accumulators with source-energy transduced from dark-energy while keeping the luckless fellow alive as long as possible. The inability to accrue source-energy except via a living power-master—with total-joint-implants as energy transducers—was an ineluctable constraint the ancient-alien, NuliZhu Tech-Masters embedded into the object-oriented, binary code to maintain control of the WuShi whenever it got raised unto The-Creeping-Darkness, as it was now.

The Jade Queen’s life-elixir mingled as a scent in the death-rattle breathing of the dying man, who was also on the brink of pneumonia. YunFei’s Hein Mofa was a mix of occultism, black-magic, and poisonous curse-magic. Unlike a dragon, this poor human could never transmogrify YunFei’s dark magic.

YuLong touched the human’s Ajna Chakra to subsume his memories.

Conflating flashes of remembrance made everything clear except the intentions of the high-adept in full revolt along with her acolyte, who had controlled a Sigil-of-Opening beneath the Pillars-of-Thoth at the Plaza of the Forbidden Gate. At last, YuLong finally had a clue about why the onus-of-protection had jarred him out of the deep-time stasis several weeks back.

Concurrent memories created multidimensional images.

By the rings-of-rank on their arms—which the sad human had spotted without understanding—both Sisters must have known full well the nature of their crime. Since there seemed not to have been a full scale invasion by the NuliZhu, this made both of the Sisters all the more culpable. Another burst of remembrance from the mind of the poor man was a tableau of terror. He had been abducted from Olde Aerthe after getting flamed to death by this very fire-dragon.

Things kept getting weirder and weirder.

How in the Seven Wandering Hells had this high-adept known to direct the WuShi unto Olde Aerthe as the target world? There was a literal infinity of arable, life-bearing worlds in the multiverse. Even in the universe of Janaidar alone, YuLong knew the common methodology of the NuliZhu slavemasters was twofold—exploit suitable worlds for mineral treasure—then abandon the human slave populations for later harvest should they survive, which was brutally insidious. With no possible explanation, for neither of these two innocents knew more, YuLong examined their concurrent flow of remembrance.

Shock and surprise vied for dominance. Somehow employing ordinary water as an energy matrix, The-Creeping-Darkness of the WuShi had manifested a creature of energy in the shape of the dreaded dark-matter demons haunting faster-than-light travel in the superluminal aspect of Janaidar’s own universe—dark-matter space. Bestial and voracious for subluminal matter, dark-matter demons were sentient but not sapient.

Transforming an ordinary NuliZhu long-head Tech-Master unto a power-master when commanded so to do by a cadre of Tech-Masters—who knew the codes and database triggers—had always been accomplished by the WuShi. Employing manifest fields-of-force above the Long Pen Quan pool in the Gallery of the Infinite Waters upriver at the Cavern Keep had always been the common location, which was validated by the hallucinatory memories of this hapless fellow. Even unto this very moment, he had not a clue as to the nightmare reality the Sisteren had stolen him into. That the WuShi had somehow done this to this luckless nitwit as an act of internal volition should have literally been impossible.

Upon this realization—and still thin-in-time—the ancient long-dragon peered into the immediate future and observed himself getting blown to bits-and-chunks just like YunFei. Peering down in the smear-of-the-present, he spied three red-and-glowing optical orbs manifesting beneath the surface as superheated death poised to strike. The ancient long-dragon shifted into metatime where million-thought-seconds for The-Creeping-Darkness