THE PERILS OF POWER

by Kevin Wohlmut

under 7,500 words

“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.” – MELVILLE

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For a few moments after they repelled the Droptyls’ vicious attack, the Emperor’s honor guard was in a state of disarray.  That was, of course, when the Dead-Alive -- with their animal cunning -- somehow knew to make their move.  “Close yer ranks!” the General barked out orders to his troops.  “Defend the high-born, blast ye!  We are under attack again!”
 

“Stand yer ground,” he responded.  A colossal soldier behind them rent their enemies’ bodies to pieces with each swing of his club.  Few of the Derralans cared to look Garmiir in his twisted face as he pushed to the head of their ranks.  Garmiir bore the Dead-Alive some resemblance, but Garmiir was a giant of a man.  He wore specially tailored leather armor, and his right arm, his fighting arm, was as thick around as both of anyone’s legs.  His left arm was short and scrawny, nearly useless, chitinous and clawed almost like a bird’s leg.  He had the mind of a small child and could speak only in whines, so no one addressed him.  But he’d been trained since birth by Derralan officers; he could follow orders, and had an uncanny facility to understand battles.  

Zeg the priest dove for safety behind the line of soldiers.  Jasso caught a glimpse of the Emperor’s golden hair behind the defensive line as well.  Jasso had argued against the Emperor’s personal participation in this mission, and it was a sign of the country’s desperate straits that Arakrut had overruled him.

The ghouls spotted Garmiir’s giant silhouette approaching, turned and fled with pitiful whimpers.  To Jasso’s annoyance, the rest of the soldiers seemed to relax again, as the remaining Dead-Alive scattered away.  The taut defensive line broke open and Zeg and the Emperor strode out of it.  Jasso turned from Pioth and pulled aside Lieutenant Collel.  “And Tarm?  Has anyone kept an eye on our burglar?”

Collel nodded and pointed to where a small man with an elongated face was emerging from behind the cover of one of the house-sized jagged blocks.  Just as well for his own sake, Jasso thought to himself.  No matter how this journey ended, the Emperor would not suffer a deserter to live who had come this close to the secrets waiting inside the ruins ahead.

Fourteen now remained alive from an entire regiment of Emperor Arakrut’s elite guards, set forth on a desperate quest to recover the Plogstion from the ruins of Craekling Hill.  Yet had the Emperor broken any more troops away from the war front, there would soon be no home for them to return to.  Not even with the legendary power of the Plogstion at his beck and call.

“We must seek shelter and concealment for the night,”  Jasso concluded.  The twilight would make further progress very slow.  The boulders and spiky concrete ruins permitted hardly ten steps in any straight line, and wherever honest dirt was found between the stone hills, the ground seethed with shards of some strange, nearly-indestructible glass.

Nevertheless, the war party marched, and soon reached a tight canyon between two bluffs.  It would conceal them from the winds and watching eyes, but they dared not light any campfires.  

“I still wish we knew more about the object of our quest,” Jasso piped up, quietly, as the men broke out their bedrolls.  “It is difficult for me to compose battlefield strategies based on legends and rumors.”

“It is the raw power of the Ancients, in Earthly form, passed down and guarded secretly among all the righteous Empires from that day to this.”  The Emperor skewered them all with his eyes, daring any to ask who merited it now.  “I have personally studied six accounts in our world’s written history where re-discovery of the Plogstion snatched back victory and protection for a people tottering on the edge of a devastating war, or a genocide.”  Again unspoken: as are we.

“The Ancients had the wisdom to handle it with impunity,” continued Zeg.  “It gave them the power to carve mountains and shape the very air.  To prevent its abuse by fallen fools such as the Marthu, it was hidden in the deepest, quietest, stillest places below the Earth.”  

Jasso had heard verses like these many times before, and he still didn’t have a direct answer to his question.  “Thus do the scrolls reveal,” he said by rote.  “But how exactly does it serve as a weapon?  Can ye simply wish yer enemy dead with it?”

The Emperor covered himself with his bedroll, ringed by three of the guards and with his back to the stone wall.  “Power of any sort can be used to take life, even as we defend it.  It depends only on yer intention while employing it.”  In the deepening shadow, it was hardly possible to see his expression.  But the tone of his voice suggested to Jasso that his faith and his resolve were the only things that allowed him to keep progressing towards his goal, the preservation of the land they all called home.

*  *  *

Mistake.

...

Mistake.

...

General Jasso’s unconscious was trying to tell him something.  It was a mistake to sleep here, his wary senses all but screamed at him, through the fog of a formless dream.  His conscious mind, though not yet awake, became aware of the wordless message.  If indeed it was a mistake to sleep here, then, logically, one should wake up.

He forced himself awake, groaned and blinked a few times, and rose to one elbow from his bedroll.  There was pain, like hot dull needles had been driven into his knees, his elbows, his knuckles.  A sting pervaded his whole body, like a headache through all his arteries and veins.

He whipped his blanket away and the bottom of it, by his feet, tore and crumbled with a wet slurp.  Jasso choked out a warning cry that echoed around the ravine, causing the others to stir.  Blobby, pale shapes were there, at his feet.  Small cones of sickly white and pale brown, ringed with tiny flat shelves of fungus.  A fine spiderweb of silver threads radiated from their stems.  The tendrils had burrowed through his blanket, dissolving and devouring it, and had now covered his feet, penetrating his skin.  It seemed to be advancing, infinitesimally, up his calves.  

“Wake!  Fonghoids!” Jasso screamed.  His disgust nearly paralyzed him, but he forced his hands to pick up his sword and unsheathe it.  They’re just plants, slower than snails, he tried to re-assure himself.  Carefully and deliberately he scraped the network of threads off of his skin using his blade, uprooting the stems of the mushrooms as he went.  He forced his quavering hands to proceed slowly, methodically, omitting not a single stray thread of silver.  He fell to the familiar habit of shaving -- like shaving his chin each morning.  He tried to quash the knowledge that this was the most important shaving job he’d ever done.

“Pioth, did ye fall asleep on yer watch?”

“No sir,” Lieutenant Pioth stood haltingly, saluted and answered formally.  “Captain Helt relieved me.”

“Where is he?  Helt!  Is that him?”  Jasso pointed to a slumped, still form, which was facing away from the group.  The Fonghoids had colonized him thoroughly.  They’d dissolved most of his skin and now many of his bones were visible.  Large mushrooms were sprouting out of his ribcage, feeding off the soft organs within, and two identical small cones were emerging from his eye-sockets.

“That was it,” concluded the General.  “The aura of this place.  Can ye not feel it?  The nausea, the ache.  He probably didn’t feel a thing when the Fonghoids moved in.  Who else?” Jasso swiveled around.  “Guardsmen, sound off!”

Lieutenants Rollan and Erit had also been taken by the Fonghoids in their sleep.  Arakrut tried to calm his General down.  “They didn’t give their lives for nothing, Jasso.  The Ancients merely test our resolve, as they would any who approach such a sacred place.  It is said that the Fonghoids render judgment on those who are unworthy -- yet I rise now, unscathed.”

Jasso snapped tersely, “Then let us resume, as quick as we can.”  The group hastened up the ravine.

As they emerged into the dawn, the arroyo took a sudden jog to the right.  A large alcove outside the elbow was completely dark, catching none of the dawn.  The smell was --

Suddenly a ghostly shape arrowed out of the natural alcove and rent a great bloody piece from the lead guardsman’s chest, snarling as it knocked him over like a toy.  The creature was twice the size of a man, mangy and bony, but it landed with a cat’s grace and spun on the next guardsman.  Jasso could now make out that it was a Bacilluyon.  It resembled a very large mountain lion, but one manic eye was twice as large as the other, and its mouth was so crooked, twisted with jutting fangs, that it could scarcely have been able to close its jaws.

Nevertheless the great beast had bitten Lieutenant Collel’s torso almost in half.  Blood and other viscera leaked from his wound upon the earth; they stank and bubbled with corruption as they emerged.  The Bacilluyon’s most terrifying weapon, some sort of natural contagion or pathogen lived in its mouth -- a pestilence so vile that if the ‘Luyon merely breathed on a man from very close range, the man’s flesh would dissolve right before his eyes.

As Jasso rushed forward, unsheathing his sword, his only thought was his dereliction of duty.  Jasso had not insisted upon battle formation as they broke camp, and the high-born were too close to this ferocious beast.  But Garmiir had a few steps’ lead on Jasso.  Using no weapon, he jumped upon the animal’s flank and tried to control its neck with his strong arm.  Garmiir howled with the effort, but alas the ‘Luyon roared as well, and its shout was far deadlier.  The giant’s own face was too close to those terrible jaws.  

Garmiir shrieked, a nightmarish unnatural sound, as if a small schoolgirl who happened to be eight feet tall were being cruelly tortured.  The Champion’s ogrish face had always looked half-melted, much like the ‘Luyon’s, but now it was melting all the way, in rivulets of pus and blood, and the fangs had never even touched him.  Somehow his strangle-hold on the thing’s neck did not weaken -- he held tighter and the monster’s tongue lolled.  Finally at the end, Garmiir pulled the ‘Luyon’s head the wrong way with the whole mass of his body, and a sickening pop reverberated down the canyon.

The rest of the high-born approached again from the start of the arroyo where they had taken cover.  Zeg the priest removed a red cloth, which smelled of the sacred oil, and laid it carefully over Garmiir’s decomposing face.  “He goes to join his blessed ancestors among the Ancients,” he whispered.  “We shall never see his like again,” Arakrut moaned, shaking his head sadly.  

Hours later, they finally spotted the Keep.  Flat, wide, and level, its ancient marble or cement walls had not weathered to the same color as the surrounding stone.  Its hollow antechamber smelled like old, dusty death.  A few rags, smashed wooden fixtures, and the bones of small animals littered the room.  Jasso guessed that more of the Dead-Alive had been using this place as a den.  Another symmetrical square opening on the opposite side led deeper into the heart of the Craekling Hill.

Ahead, double cement doors perfectly and symmetrically stoppered the square exit hall.  Zeg stepped forward, with a look of relief and expectation on his round face.  “Surely the doors that would lead to a sacred repository of power.”  He reached for the knob ahead of him.

Jasso threw himself at the man bodily, knocking his arms aside and pinning him against the wall, a pace back from the doors.  “Are ye mad, priest?  If it were that easy to find the Plogstion, everyone would have their own by now.” 

“The Ancients favor our quest,” the priest rubbed his smarting wrists.

“Fools rush in where those Ancients fear to tread,” Jasso retorted, earning a fine blush from a flustered Zeg.  “Tarm, yer duty lies before ye.”

The thief skulked to the head of the procession.  “Little here will be safe as it looks at first glance,” he muttered.  With a soldier holding a torch just behind his shoulders, Tarm poked at the knobs’ mechanism with a pair of tiny picks.  Suddenly he leaped back like a squirrel.  Tarm also pulled the soldier’s weapon arm to gain traction, accidentally thrusting the other man’s lance into the doorway. A scything blade slashed across the door frame, struck the good Derralan steel, and screeched in protest, raising sparks.  Its speed would have severed any hand that had twisted the knob.  But confronted instead with a steel pike, the blade chipped and bent. 

Pioth and Rethe, with Jasso on their heels, advanced and discovered another rectangular chamber, even larger than the first.  Somebody gasped.  Lieutenant Rethe’s flickering torchlight had reached the wide sidewall of the chamber. 

The opposite wall was flanked by two brightly painted statues, their colors dimmed greatly by the dust of centuries, but still easily visible.  These regal figures appeared to be looking and pointing directly at the men approaching them.  In between, the wall was covered in strange, ancient runes.  A gaping hole in the wall broke right through the middle of the message. 

Zeg strode forward to bow in front of the monarch.  “This writing here, my lord, it is the language of the Shungur.  They reigned ten centuries ago, long ago indeed, but their empire is well known to historians.  The Yolani must have acquired the Plogstion from the Shungur in the first place.

“It’s like a translation stone.  The same message written three times, the three most widely known languages of the era no doubt.”  Sheepishly Zeg admitted, “I can read most of the Shungur text, but the other two languages are completely unknown to me.  And I am well-versed.”

“Useless warnings in three dead languages,” Jasso grumbled while Zeg continued to work, scrawling notes on a small blank scroll as the priest proceeded.

“And yet, if ye know what to look for, their language is not so very different from our mother tongue today.  Unlike the Yolani, the Shungur language was derived from the same roots as ours.  Ye can see how the ‘E’ rune has three straight branches instead of curls -- the ‘T’ is the same, the ‘S’ does not cross itself -- and the verbs use these archaic forms that we know from the scrolls and legends.  I know yer mind is sharp, General,” smiled Zeg.  “Give it a try and see if ye can obtain the general sense of the text.”

“‘Entrance to -- area, forbidden -- final judgment, Council of All Kings’,” Jasso read haltingly.  “I think I’m seeing it.”

“Yet look here,” pointed Tarm, picking up two broken pieces of the mural.  “Don’t these two look like they fit together?  ‘Council... not mete punishment’,” he read, then:  “‘Every step, something, nearer’.”

Lieutenant Pioth rolled his eyes.  “We had to hire the only literate thief in all of Derrala.” 

“So the Plogstion had been placed here by the Shungur before the Yolani peoples found it,” Jasso summarized in low tones.  

“Possibly long before.  When exactly was the Plogstion created?”

“The best guesses of our historians are that the Ancients walked the Earth about eight to ten thousand years ago, perhaps more,” explained the cleric.

“Have there been any examples of people doing good with this power?”

“We’ve gone over this before.  There are still other examples.  When the Het tribe was enslaved and put to work in Krillun, they discovered an ancient vault of Plogstion buried in the mines.  Its power set a curse upon the Great Steel Tower they had been forced to build, and it crumbled overnight!”

“No, I mean using the power in a constructive way.  Building something up, helping people, curing plagues.  Without killing or destroying anything.”

“Well, the Ancients used it to fly through the air, to light up the moon, to heal and to build...”

“And what relationship have the Blighted with the Ancients?  It seems as if those disgusting creatures are often associated with the legends of the Plogstion.”

“In truth, General, they are the dregs of humanity -- those who have been expelled from all the brighter lands and forced to live here.  Descendants of traitors.  Defeated survivors of past wars, and so forth.  Anyone who lives near the Plogstion, without the divine favor of the Ancients, is surely doomed to madness and an early death.”

Well obviously that’s true since we just killed a dozen of them without any hesitation, Jasso realized.  But this line of thought disturbed him.  These creatures they had just killed... he could as easily have been among them, if circumstances were different.  He or his sons might end up joining the Dead-Alive later, if the Marthu won this war.  These were merely people -- disfigured, sickened and changed into horrible ghouls by proximity to the Plogstion.  Some part of him knew there was more to the story still, but he’d need time to put all the pieces into place. 

Arakrut nodded with satisfaction.  “Thus we invite the judgment of the Ancients,” the Emperor responded.  “I know in my heart we shall prevail and all wrongs will be rectified.”

*  *  *

A few hours later, Jasso recalled the Emperor’s confidence and wondered if his liege still felt it.  After proceeding through a dozen of the concrete doors, with corroded yet lethal traps behind every one, their numbers had been cut almost in half again.  Only three of the guardsmen, plus the General, made up their front ranks, in spite of the best efforts from the burglar Tarm to disarm the deadly devices.

Arakrut was still driven by his urgency.  But he permitted everyone a breather -- despite the weird blue glow emanating faintly from the opposite wall of the chamber they’d opened.  It itched like a scab at the corner of everyone’s vision, promising the relief of answers.  Answers to millennia-old questions about the ancestors and the Ancients.  Answers for which the men they’d left behind had already paid in full. 

The far wall held several rectangles of dark metal set into the flat marble or cement.  A smaller rectangle emanated the blue light -- suffused, soft and pleasant like a candle behind a paper screen,  Jasso tried to re-assure himself.  But this light did not flicker.  The blue panel held a decoration, one word and a pictogram. It showed a stick figure of a man placing his hand upon a square panel.  Not much mystery here.  Zeg nodded with tired optimism.  “I pray the favor of the Ancients on my choice,” the big man intoned.  “Everyone else, remove to a safe distance.”  Whatever that might be, was again the unspoken thought they all shared.

Zeg advanced somberly and placed his hand flat upon the blue panel.  When nothing happened, he leaned into it.  Then a sharp ‘click’ was followed by the sound of a blacksmith’s bellows, a hissing of air through some sort of bladder.  There were a couple of rhythmic squeaks as if something metal which rotated was in desperate need of sacred oil.

And then a booming voice filled the chamber.  Everyone in the group jumped out of their skin, nervously hefting weapons, expecting to be attacked by shadowy revenants again.  It was hard to imagine even the gender of the unseen person who spoke -- it was slurred so badly. 

“It’s an early, distorted form of the spoken Shungur language,” Zeg answered their stares, “which makes it a precursor to our own.  This is some sort of official record, engraved in sound itself!  Much like our scribes commit my liege’s deeds to paper, for posterity.”  Jasso was starting to recognize a few words too.  The General supposed that the language had changed radically over all the centuries and millennia since this record was created, the way that farmers at the edges of Derrala spoke a marpled version of the formal speech which he used at the Emperor’s court.  At regular intervals, the speech dissolved into a flat scraping sound, as if a sudden rush of wind had overwhelmed the speaker.

“...REPROSSS...”  A half a word, then a garble.  Strange, indecipherable speech, words that Jasso could not identify.  “...REMEDEEYATE...” and another garble. 

Zeg nodded.  “We are actually hearing a voice from millennia long past!  I have never felt such a personal connection to our blessed ancestors.” 

Finally after several more minutes, the blue glow faded from the panel, and Arakrut hissed sorrowfully.  As the bellows sound faded to nothing, the panel lit with blue light again.  Arakrut was visibly relieved.

“I am grateful for this guidance,” he said, as he neared the glowing panel with his palm outstretched.  “It was obviously meant to endure meddling by the Blighted, and only the Ancients know what else.”  Arakrut leaned with his hand onto the blue panel again.  On cue, the spoken message filled their ears once more. 

“...FISSSSH IN OWR STREAMS...” it continued.  It was becoming clearer to Jasso’s comprehension as Arakrut and Zeg repeated the message a third time, then a fourth.  “WE WERE DEFENDING...” (garble) “...DEFENDED UNTO DEATH.”  The message clicked and warbled and ceased once again.

“Well for the Ancestors’ sakes, priest, don’t leave us in suspense!” Jasso struggled to keep himself from shouting.  “Enlighten us!” 

“Yes.  First of all, they did not call themselves the Shungur, they had a different name, ‘Atlan’-something.  They spoke not of the Plogstion by name, but I believe they called it by another word.

“What they say, as I interpret it with our modern knowledge, is that they uncovered this storehouse of the magic of the Ancients, and they attempted to twist that magic to their own purposes.  But every time they did so, the substance grew stronger. 

“They feared what it had done to their enemies’ lands, or perhaps it had gotten out of their control and affected their own lands and crops and farms.  That is when they start talking about fish in their streams.  Finally, with great effort, they gathered up all the scattered pieces of the Plogstion that they had found here -- ”

“Fish?  Here?” Gaboe wondered.  “How could a fish get itself all the way up here to these hills?”

“’Tis said that during the epoch of the Ancients, there were fish anywhere that there was a body of clean water.”  Arakrut said with a wry smile, as if even he didn’t believe that particular legend was meant literally.

“After that, they mention the Fonghoids.  Or at least, they say that mushrooms were seeded here to mediate -- to pass judgment on those who would gain access to the Plogstion, decide if they are worthy.  From there, I think we come by our tradition that the Ancients still show their favor or disfavor upon the world, by success in this quest.”

Zeg rose, pointing to the door panels inside its alcove.  “Once again, I shall pray the favor of the Ancients upon us."  The cleric closed his eyes and mouthed a silent chant.  Then he moved to the exit doors and pushed their knobs.

Once again a hissing sound, like a bellows, echoed through the chamber.  But this time, small darts crisscrossed the air, shot from tiny nooks and holes at each corner, virtually filling the alcove. 

Tarm sank to his knees, as had Zeg.  He arched his back and twisted, trying to reach his wounds.  They didn’t seem to be large scars.  But spittle was now forming at Tarm’s mouth, just like Zeg’s.  He wheezed.   “Thousand-year old poison.  Still surprisingly effective!”  The small man collapsed.

The Emperor, cradling him, listened to Zeg’s last words.  “I failed.” He gasped but seemed to take in no air.  “Don’t -- let my own -- I have done wrong in my life,” he began to ramble like a man demented.  After having made his living with prognostications, he seemed ready even now to make one final sermon.  “The Ancients have surely judged me wanting, but do not take it as an omen against our quest.  Save our homeland!  Oh my Emperor --”  he sputtered. 

There followed several long moments of silence.  Who would perform the funeral oration now that the priest himself was dead?  As it happened, the Emperor bequeathed his countrymen that gift.  He appropriated Zeg’s funerary supplies and enlisted the help of the surviving guardsman.

The Emperor was helping Lieutenant Pioth to his feet.  Pioth had somehow acquired a nosebleed even though he had been at the back of the ranks, far from the trap.  Meanwhile, Jasso turned to Gaboe and Thoral to see if either had survived the poison darts.  But clearly neither would get to their feet ever again.

Still another unearthly, magical color gleamed from past the doors ahead of them.  This one was greenish, like the moon on a very foggy night.  But in truth it was no color Jasso had ever seen.

As the three men approached the opening where the walls broadened, a glowing green figure, human shaped, suddenly winked into view from absolutely nowhere.  “A ghost!” Pioth blurted. 

“It is not,” intoned the Emperor.  “Zeg and I discussed this legend.” The specter moved, nodding to her left, as Jasso stepped up to her.  He sensed, rather than felt, some kind of unseen limit, and suspiciously he reached his hand forward.  It was stopped by some kind of unreflective glass barrier.  Ahead was the ghost, and to his right, the corridor continued.  The facing wall of the corridor, as far as he could see to his right, was protected by that nearly invisible glass.

“This is a magic spell which is called a hollogman.”

“But it’s a woman!” protested the Lieutenant.

“Silence!” grated the Emperor.  “A mechanism behind the wall shines a magical light upon some kind of glass.  Here on our side, it appears like we are looking at a real person, through a window.  It is an illusion.  In reality, there is nothing beyond.”  

Jasso’s eyes told him that she had breadth, depth and curves like a real woman.  She was middle aged and her face was attractive, although she wore an expression of pragmatic worry like a young mother dealing with a sick child.  “Will the wonders of the Ancients never cease,” he whispered.  “First we found a voice preserved in the air, then we find a likeness of an image which can actually move.”

Jasso judged the woman was wearing a military uniform of some kind.  Her uniform, if indeed it was, fit her smartly with many utilitarian pockets.  One small colorful patch upon her shoulder was an exquisite rectangular shield of multicolored stripes and tiny stars. 

“Let us follow her lead,” the Emperor commanded, gesturing to their right.  The hollogman seemed to walk with them, an eerie companion at their left flank. 

The ephemeral whine of the Ancients’ magic began once more.  After witnessing their awful power again and again, all three men jumped like cats and clung to the cement of the near wall.  Slowly an unliving voice rose once again into the clammy air of the tomb. 

It was a woman’s voice.  “You have reached the place where you should never come,” the green specter said, and as they halted her gaze fixed upon them, unmoving and unblinking.

“Watch carefully,” the Emperor continued.  “She is not alive.  She derives her movements only from yer own.”  When Jasso stopped walking and stood motionless, the hollogman image ceased moving too.  As he cautiously continued, her breathing resumed and her face and hair began moving again, lips out of time with her speech.

Her words were strange and formal, her accent was very odd, but the quality of this voice was better preserved than the Atlan voice they had heard earlier.  The woman was speaking extremely slowly, with many pauses.  With her face and gestures, while their march lent motion to her image -- and with the experience of reading and hearing the ancient languages in the catacombs above -- Jasso and the others found they could understand much of what she was saying. 

The voice persisted, weirdly separated from the image of the woman who uttered it, so very very long ago.  “You will find nothing here which can help you.  This is not a place of honor.  No great deeds are commemorated here.  This area is not a suitable place to live in, or farm.  You should not gather food, or building materials from here.  Your journey will bring back nothing useful from this place at all.  Leave here, go home, and never come back.”

Pioth swallowed hard, and even though the sound was as soft as a bird’s wing, the other two men heard it clearly in the silence.  The Emperor re-assured them. “Think, Lieutenant -- if ye owned a magical treasure, surely ye would say anything to discourage the unworthy from looting it.”

“This burial site must remain undisturbed for many tens of thousands of years into our future,” the hollogman spoke again.  “These tombs must be sealed, never to be opened, like the tombs of the ancient Pharaohs.”

“Who?” inquired Jasso.  “Empires still more ancient than these, I suppose,” replied his Emperor.  “The forefathers of the Ancients.”

Her gaze became introverted, but still there was no mistaking the sadness.  “The Pharaohs’ tombs, of course, were opened, a mere four thousand years later.  Our tombs here must be sealed even better than the Pharaohs’.  This warning must be our greatest, most lasting achievement, and we must do it somehow while our other resources are waning.”

Many of the words were unfamiliar to Jasso.  “You are entering a repository for nuclear waste.”  He didn’t know how the words ‘new’ and ‘clear’ could be applied to waste, nor what such things had to do with the Plogstion.  For the first time, he actually missed the presence of that annoying priest, Zeg. 

She continued speaking.  “We cannot know whether your civilization will be more advanced than ours, or more primitive.  We cannot be sure what language you might speak, and so we have placed warnings in symbols, on the surface all around this place.  Yet you are here now.  We consider you to be the greatest threat to human safety.” As they walked, the hollogman pointed her finger accusatorily.  Eerily, each of the three men saw her staring and pointing directly into their eyes.  “You are the emergency we designed this place to prevent.  We refer to this as ‘Human Intrusion’.  If you are hearing my voice, then we have failed in our purpose and our mission.

“What is stored in this chamber is dangerous, but only when disturbed.  In case you are capable of understanding words like Uranium, Plutonium and Cesium, we have left complete records and explanations here in this archive.”  One of her words reminded Jasso of the word ‘Plogstion’, but it sounded so different, coming from the hollogman.  The woman pointed ahead of them to an interruption in the glass wall.  As they approached, they saw a tiny alcove set with cement shelves.  “We beg you, please read this information, and be sure you understand it before going any further.” The alcove once had some sort of door protecting it, but now only rusted and split hinges hung from the frame.  A small amount of crushed cement and wood debris littered the shelves, but nothing else.

As they walked past the empty records alcove, the hollogman re-appeared on the other side and continued her mournful speech.  “For your safety, you our descendants, we cannot assume you know or understand the technical records.  We have a responsibility to protect you from our dangers, whether or not you can understand.  And so we must also explain this place to you in the simplest of terms, because that means our civilization has fallen and our science has been forgotten.”

Another square cement door, the end of the hallway, faded into the torchlight as they continued walking forward.  “You have now reached the repository.  What is there is dangerous and repulsive.  The danger is still present in your time as it was in ours.  Please, go no further.

“At the dawn of time, man, unlike other animals, learned to master fire.  Man conquered the world.  Then man discovered a new fire, one far more powerful.  We began generating power with nuclear material.  This is a fire which can never, ever be extinguished.  Not in the lifetime of Man, not in the lifetime of all men who will ever live.  At first, we reveled in the power, thinking that all the forces of the Universe were ours to command.  Then, to our horror, we discovered that when we used this atomic fire to create, at the same time it would always destroy.  The fire burns inside us once we have used it, like a contagion.  It burns in our young, our men, and women.  We built this place to contain the fire, to let it burn alone and undisturbed for the rest of eternity.

“Please heed this message!  Sending this message was important to us.  We considered ourselves to be a very powerful country. 

“The danger here, is to the human body, and it can kill.  The danger is an emanation of energy, or, the heat of a fire, as you might understand it.  Right now an invisible fire is burning all around you, and inside you.  You cannot see it, you cannot smell, hear, or taste it.  But it is here.  It is the last warmth of the light of my civilization, thousands of years after we’ve gone.  The more time you spend here, the more this fire will burn you.  We beg you, as your ancestors.  Leave this place immediately; do not take anything with you.  Never come back, and tell your children that no one must ever come here.”

Pioth and the Emperor sighed, almost in unison.  Jasso knew his Emperor wanted to press forward.  And now, Jasso knew that it was the wrong thing to do.  “My liege,” Jasso began gently.  “The Ancients weren’t protecting a precious treasure.  Ye heard the hollogman.  Their resources were running out.  Why would these ancient empires go to so much trouble to keep people out of this place if they knew their empires were dying?”

“We can’t know what all these empires were thinking thousands of years ago,” Arakrut answered with a frown.

Possibly for the first time in his life, General Jasso could no longer quash his doubts.  He exploded, “We certainly can’t understand what they were thinking if ye are so determined the Plogistion is the answer to all our troubles!”  Arakrut’s eyebrows arched.  Jasso was not done.

“Back when we heard the message from the Atlan peoples.  Zeg told us the Fonghoids mediated, judged those who were worthy of the power.  But the word they used wasn’t ‘mediation’, it’s more like our word ‘remediation’.  The Fonghoids were placed here to repair, to heal.  The damage was when the Plogstion was released in the first place!" 

The Emperor listened, aghast.  “The Fonghoids suck on our blood because they gather up scattered minerals, like iron.  The Plogstion is a mineral that somehow burns invisibly.  What if the emanations of the Plogstion had warped and changed the Fonghoids?  Maybe that’s how the Bacilluyon became so different from a regular mountain lion, too.  Maybe that’s the reason the Droptyls are so deadly.  All three of them, they’ve all got that half-melted look to their flesh.”

“General,” rumbled Arakrut, “We can harness this power, however frightening it seems.  No matter how destructive, it can be used in defense.  We can, and we must.  Our people, our country, the lives of everyone we hold dear, depend on us doing so.  I am the Emperor of Derrala.  I will not back down from my duty and responsibility.  The threat ends here, today.”

“Yes, the threat ends here.  So many others have made this same mistake.” The rest of Jasso’s reply was wordless.  He dropped his torch behind him, where it still shed light on their confrontation.  And then the scraping of steel against the rim of his scabbard echoed up and down the long corridor.

“My old friend,” Arakrut breathed softly, and for a moment it actually seemed as if his eyes welled up.  “I know ye too well to think I can sway ye after that sword comes out.  Can ye really not see it?  Can ye not see how yer obedience here is the crux upon which everything depends?”  Answering his own question, the Emperor began to doff the flowing silk robes which might have tripped him or impeded his sword-arm in a fight. 

“General Jasso,” mumbled the Emperor in formal singsong, as the breastplate of his armor caught the torchlight, “I must declare ye in a state of rebellion against yer lawful monarch and I order yer execution.  Pioth, defend yer liege.” 

Pioth had a tortured look on his face.  He knew that fractions of a second now could decide not only his fate, but the fate of everyone still alive, inside and outside the dungeon.  Who could be sure exactly what was on his mind? -- but he hefted his sword and stepped to face Jasso, and Jasso assumed Pioth’s decision had gone against him. 

Jasso raised his sword with the hilt high above his head, blade pointing sideways; he advanced, and then spun back in a pirouette, briefly facing away from Pioth.  Pioth thought he saw his only chance at survival and of course, he thrust.  But the 
General knew better than anyone that the army’s standard-issue mail shirt tended to ride up in the small of the back when the wearer lunged forward.  Fast as Arakrut could blink, Pioth clattered and thudded on the floor, screaming and groaning.  Jasso stepped over the soon-to-be-corpse of one of his two remaining friends, and advanced upon the other one, in a deep defensive guard.

While the two men circled each other in defensive stances, their weapons locked in symmetry momentarily.  But each blade wavered -- the cursed emanations from this place had sickened both men, and each knew they had no time to waste upon the niceties of dueling strategy. 

They launched into simultaneous blows, but immediately Jasso got the worst of the exchange.  He had worn leather armor, to remain agile, whereas the Emperor’s armor was the lightest, strongest steel alloy that Derralan smiths could produce.  His own expert sword strike had merely glanced off Arakrut’s armored sleeve, while Arakrut’s sharp blade had bitten through his leathers and stabbed into his shoulder, almost reaching the collarbone.  Suddenly Jasso’s sword arm and most of his back felt like they were on fire. 

Arakrut rasped an animal laugh, caught up by the heat of the duel, and desperation to see his mission completed.  Seeing the manic grin on Arakrut’s face, Jasso thrust, a quick bird’s flight meant merely to cause his opponent to flinch back.  But Arakrut’s training hadn’t quite left him, and fast the Emperor deflected the weak blow.  Jasso recovered and tried an upthrust, flinging his sword arm wildly to see if he could find the weak point in the underarm of his Emperor’s armor.  He wasn’t quite accurate enough, and instead his sword skittered up the side of Arakrut’s torso, giving the Emperor time to bind the weapon between his arm and his breastplate.  He knew he should have let go of his own sword, as the Emperor’s counterstroke arrived.  A cold intruder pierced a seam in his leathers, penetrating Jasso’s side -- not very deep, but deep enough.

Jasso collapsed to lie on his back on the floor, feeling warm torrents of blood from two places.  He couldn’t raise his arms or legs to defend himself anymore, they were just too heavy.  Still he had to convince the Emperor with words... there was so much at stake; surely Arakrut could be persuaded to see that.  Jasso wanted to shout, but his lungs just wouldn’t suck in any more air.  His voice was a wet gurgle that somehow failed to produce any intelligible words.  He had to keep trying.  He had to --

*  *  *

When the awareness had faded from Jasso’s eyes, Arakrut wiped his bloody sword on the General’s leather armor.  Reverently the Emperor placed the red cloth over his face and chanted some snatches of the funeral oration.

“This is where the Ancients cast their final judgment upon me,” he muttered to the empty corridor, to the silent hollogman, to nobody in particular.  If these doors ahead held yet another magical trap, or even if they were locked in any serious manner, the Empire of Derrala might end right here and now. 

Arakrut turned the last set of doorknobs smoothly.  They were not locked.  The doors opened onto a wide rectangular chamber, walled in flat cement.

The torches which the two men had dropped outside the doors cast a ruddy gleam into the large enclosed space.  The gleam reflected off metal... cylindrical casks of metal.  The room was as long and wide as his palace courtyard, and it was stacked almost floor to ceiling with metal barrels.  The stacks stretched in rows to the back of the chamber. 

Some of the barrels had apparently corroded and the metal ruptured from the inside -- why, he did not know, perhaps the barrels had weakened over time for whatever reason -- so the contents were visible in a few piles around the room.  The canisters contained small, black pellets and broken pieces of rods.  He knelt by a spilled cask and rolled some of the black pellets between his fingers.  The pellets were an unusually heavy and durable material, refined to the highest quality he’d ever seen.  They’d make good arrowheads, sling bullets and projectiles.  The small pieces could be scattered and hidden behind enemy lines, maybe smuggled into their food supplies.  Surely they’d sap the enemy’s strength just like they had done to his companions.  They could be pulverized and soaked into an enemy’s water. 

Arakrut felt exhausted -- although he’d lost no blood in the fight with Jasso, he had a half-dozen painful bruises and contusions to remind him how close Jasso had come to dooming his own homeland.  But Arakrut was determined to get these metal barrels to the surface and back to the war front.  Now that the site had been opened and the traps discovered and disarmed, he could easily conscript some peasants and soldiers to move all of it to the surface.  With the Plogstion a known quantity, his mining engineers and siege experts could be instructed to implement his defense plan almost without further direction from the Emperor himself.

Idly Arakrut pitied the other empires which had spent centuries picking these things up from their battlefields and returning them to the casks.  They just didn’t understand what they were dealing with.  They didn’t deserve to wield the magic of the Ancients.  The power of the Plogstion was now gathered for his use, and his use alone.

Author’s note:  This story was partly inspired by the film, “Into Eternity” by Michael Madsen, which you can see or stream here: http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/ .  You can also listen to an edited radio adaptation as part of the audio podcast, “Unwelcome Guests” Episode #558, here: http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/558_-_Into_Eternity_(Understanding_The_Ongoing_Nuclear_Wars) .
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