Interlude - A Red Comet Over Ventris

The Ulon Empire's most elite warriors are staging an attack against a human bastion of freedom and justice. Can the powers of good stand against premeditated depravity and unfathomable greed?

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A Red Comet Over Ventris

© Copyright 2012 to 2015 C. H. Watson. All rights reserved.



The ocean waves were breaking hard against the iron-clad hull of the Blood Comet and the wind was gorging its great black sails. The northern coast of Etrysus was legendary for its appetite for seafarers; but it would go hungry today, for not even the deadly northern waters could mount upon the Blood Comet's mighty frame. The massive darkwood beams of the ship creaked and groaned as the towering vessel steered a southerly course on its final approach toward the coast of Ventris, the proud and independent kingdom that had long defied conquest; but that defiance would prove futile against the might of the Ulon Empire's most fearsome titan of the waves and its fell cargo of steel-clad battlemasters.

Upon the deck, sailors and officers paced and swarmed, each tending his or her task and station. The floating city was busy with industry; from the heights of the masts to her deepest decks, the furtive economy of sweat and strain ran its course over the long, blue miles; and like any city, this one had a ruler. Her name was Princess Gerda Blackwarden, scion of the Blackwarden Dynasty of the Ulon Empire and lethal disciple of those forces of destruction that an empire wields in the course of its dominion. No stranger to sea campaigns, the scion of the Blackwarden Dynasty of Ulon had taken up her sword and armor and cast her lot with the commoners who, like an empire, rode the swell and surge of fate with only their grit and determination between them and the inky black depths of oblivion.

Up through the dark depths of the ship, Princess Blackwarden tromped in her metal skin, her tungsten sollerets resounding upon the ladders; it was unbecoming, she thought, for an antipaladin of Tasselisse to be seen in the cloth attire of the weak ones who lived for comfort and pomp, and the soft feel of satin and silk disgusted her sensibilities. Soon, her helmeted head emerged into the dazzle of the noon-day sun, and she hoisted herself up through the hatch and mounted the deck like it was a saddled dragon. All around her, seamen lowered their heads and moved wide of her, for she was a fearsome sight; and her greatsword, Pillar of Blood, reminded them of her unholy station.

"Your majesty," croaked Oertok Raiger with as little respect as he could muster. He, too, was of the order of antipaladins that championed Tasselisse, the goddess of destruction, though he had no qualms about appearing out of his armor. Comfortably, he reclined against a rail, sneering within at the metal-clad aristocrat. The sea-spray blew up behind him and he turned away to regard the infinite expanse of blue upon which the ship seemed to crawl. Gerda turned her head like a turret and regarded him coldly, and then continued on toward the armored figure of the man she had come to see, her ally and fellow antipaladin Lord Victar Koltyron.

Victar Koltyron was not so much a man as he was a monolith of enameled steel, malevolence and ruthless lethality. Not a single nerve twitched that he did not command; and his face, though invisible within his cruelly angular helm, was as a block of pig-iron carved with a volcano's torch-fire. He was human only by the strictest definition; in all other ways he was a metal beast that sought to grasp the world by the throat and throttle it to pieces. It was to the foothills of this forged mountain range of a man that Gerda Blackwarden ascended.

"Princess," seethed the voice of an articulated metal serpent crawling through a slag-heap. "I thought I would have to bear only the sight of these peasants today. How may I serve you?"

"I am bored, Victar, and the sight of you in your idleness disturbs me. We should be freeing the blood of the weak to sink back into the dirt, not imprisoned and rusting on this miserable heap."

"Verily, my beauty," hissed Koltyron. Gerda regarded him for a moment, and wondered briefly if Victar Koltyron had ever seen her without her armor. Dismissively, she stared out over the waves, hoping to catch a glimpse of the land that she would soon grind beneath her heel.

"Bored already?" cried Oertok Raiger as he bounded over to his fellow terrors. "Perhaps Victar here will dance you about the deck! Careful you don't get your armor locked up, though, or I will take great delight in greasing you!" With his hands on his hips and his head cocked at an infuriating angle, Oertok smiled broadly at his fellow antipaladins. The two armored aristocrats regarded him with a mixture of animus and incredulity; and then returning their gazes to the horizon, they ignored him utterly.

Annoyed, Oertok orbited his fellow warriors, searching for a way to get a reaction from them and alleviate his own boredom at a stroke.

"Have you two any gambling spirit about you?" asked Oertok suddenly. Oertok Raiger had once pit his own daughter against a wolverine for a hundred talons wager merely for the amusement of it, laughing as he spilled his purse and departed from the bloody scene. He had a look of mischief about his otherwise cruelly debauched face, and his two armored companions saw it instantly.

"What have you, swine?" asked Gerda plainly. Oertok smiled wide.

"It is but this, my song-bird," he said wryly, "I think that you and your metal scarecrow Victar are no taller than my shadow when it comes to bringing the glory of Tasselisse to the unworthy. I wager that I could fill a galley with blood before you could fill your helmets."

Gerda and Victar regarded one another for a moment. This was irregular even by the chaotic standards of antipaladins, and both felt as though they should have Oertok's giblets on their crossguards were it not for the oaths they had sworn to their order. Looking back at the infuriating smile of Oertok Raiger, they became curious as to his meaning.

"I see I have reached something in you!" he cackled. The world was all sport to him, and to embroil two nobles in his scheme was a prospect that he couldn't resist. "My wager is simple: I'll put up my helmet - which you can see over there by that rail - against your helmets, so that I may see your beautiful faces glinting in the sun!" he exclaimed with grotesquely exaggerated sardonicism. "The bet shall be this: when we are free from this floating sty, we shall each choose a path and carve a trench of blood and entrails across the reeking land of the Sintoccans, whom we are here to slay anyway. We shall converge on their capital, and whichever of us takes the head of the unlucky King Ellery shall have three helmets for his own!"

Lord Victar Koltyron and Princess Gerda Blackwarden could scarcely believe the impertinence of Oertok Raiger, who was to them an insect of the merchant class; worse yet was the infuriating smile upon his face that would have been peeled from his skull had he been any other than an antipaladin of Tasselisse.

The two armored figures stood perfectly motionless in thought for a moment, though the ship rocked beneath them. Oertok continued to pace and chuckle to himself, and finally an answer emerged.

"Very well, worm," came the voice of Victar Koltyron. "Since we must slay the Ellery line, let it be with haste; and your helmet I shall hang upon my keep where your head rightly belongs."

Oertok was delighted, and capered about for a moment, laughing to himself in his twisted fashion. Princess Blackwarden nodded as well, and soon the coast of Etrysus rose up from the horizon before the three grisly rivals.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Fantasy and sci-fi are very challenging genres to write, with all the names, words, places, gizmos, etc the author must pull from thin air. More than anyone I can recall on this site, and I've been here for years, you have handled it with the most imagination and skill. For what it may be worth, I'd prefer to see a less wordy beginning with fewer details. You've seen my simple style of writing, so you probably know why I say that. I'm sure there's nothing at all wrong with how you've done it, and it's just a matter of taste. In all, I consider this to be some very competent writing.

[Cambion]

Thanks for reading my work, it pleases me greatly to hear the praise of an accomplished appreciator of language. Like my space stories, this was written for an audience that demands short reading... and then doesn't read it anyway. That's why my space stories weren't fully developed (they were meant to be data dumps on my d&d players, and so that's how they must appear to those who read them).

Again, thanks!