Cherno Caster 342 – Chariot of the Gods

The landscape flashed by faster than any ordinary eye could make out. A blur of beige interspersed with purple, dry grasses and dryer ground, poisonous flowers standing tall on twisted, woody stalks. As the landscape transitioned from the ordinary towards the alien wilderness of the Beyond Frontier, one bleeding into the other, the earth itself twisted in unnatural ways. There was a swath of land with terraces of rock holding ponds of stagnant water, miniature swamps a few hundred ters across, and enormous insects battling with great ferocity across them, as if each terrace-pond were a kingdom. Krahe’s passage, consisting only a few leaps of Rocinante from one terrace-edge to another, seed to stir up the native creatures, although they only lashed out in her general direction, half-heartedly shooing her off before using the disturbance as an excuse for renewed conflict. One side resembled tailless whip-scorpions with flat bodies and long legs; imnse, long arms, and whip-like legs-turned-feelers; Even as Krahe rode alongside the terrace-swamp, a few of them stalked the curiosity of geography, arms lashing out at their enemies, who resembled vinegaroons crossed with bombardier beetles, having shorter limbs and lesser agility, but vastly superior armor, and an apparent ability to beco nearly invisible in the water. One popped up, and, twisting its body, hosed down the underside of his opponent’s flat body with boiling water, and the flat creature collapsed atop the bombardier-vinegaroon with great screeching and thrashing.

It was interesting. It was also not the first, second, third, or fourth such landmark she had encountered — not in the totality of her journey from Audunpoint, but since departing from the newly-ford “Corpse Pile Campsite.” Naturally, she had no way to know that it would co to be known as this.

Inevitably, almost relievingly, an actual impedance ca up. It was no swarm of beasts or adverse weather, these she had encountered and dealt with without issue by way of Rocinante’s agility or direct application of firepower to drive off the threat. No, this one ca, at first, as a scream. A distant scream, the unmistakable tone-that-wasn’t-a-tone of an Archon Flash. Not above, not north or south or east or west, but far, far, far below in an indistinct direction.

Then, so twenty minutes and quite a few kiloters later, ca the tremors, and the sounds of chanisms far beneath the ground, the thunderous slamming of interlocks, clicking and whirring of imnse gear linkages engaging and disengaging. The earth shook, and split open as if a maw to swallow all, but where one anticipated an impossibly deep abyss, there was a twisted mass of chanisms, so halted and others still moving, gleaming in silver and brass and replete with the imagery of the Seven Spokes. Ancient, truly ancient imagery of the Seven Spokes. Finally, it all shifted and locked together into a ribcage-like corridor that reached the surface. There was only one way to describe it, and that was “unnatural”. It didn’t belong. This was known to her. The chanisms of the Inner Wheel simply didn’t exist this close to the surface outside the regions imdiately at the Wheel’s base. This was nothing less than an intentional passage, extruded to the surface temporarily. Throughout this process, Krahe never halted or slowed, in fact she urged Rocinante to move faster, pushing well towards 140km/h. The reason was that the noise-from-below hadn’t halted, the sound of vast chanisms had rely given way to another, altogether far more foreboding sort of noise.

The rumbling.

That which foreshadowed the reason for all this, the reason the Inner Wheel had forced open a passage here and now.

The rumbling approached and beca more distinct, cutting through the wind. It was not one sound, but two, and their origins made themselves clear in due ti.

Out from the depths raced a vast mass of oily, dark flesh, without distinct form. An expulsion the size and shape of a macro-train, as of formless protoplasm wrought in mockery of all biological law, rendering even the likes of a Scornbeast as paragons of anatomical consistency. Tendrils, arms, legs, eyes, mouths, wings, and extremities of all conceivable and inconceivable sorts constantly took shape, erupting from the formless form to drag it along, only to be crushed back into the mass by its roiling. Behind it, chasing it, there surged ahead an equally shining and dreadful construction. The form was as if the centaur equivalent of a chanized war-chariot, easily ten if not fifteen ters tall, bursting ahead, a humanoid chanical form growing out of a huge chanism in the chariot’s cradle, wielding a great halberd and its wheeled body bristling with adornnts, talismans, and rune-carved staves of bone that spewed golden-black magic every-which-way. She could scarcely make out any details, considering both her own and the chariot’s speed.

She outraced them at first, Rocinante spewing fla from between its ribs and leaving a trail of glass hoofprints as it accelerated to over twice its normal peak velocity — over 400km/h. The wind thundered in her ears, but the automaton just about managed to keep her shielded from the worst of it, sand and bugs and errant leaves dashed against a near-invisible windshield-barrier that sprouted from the top of its head like a stegosaur crest.

Only, the chase, for so damnable reason, proceeded in the sa direction she had decided to flee. It soon beca obvious the thing, spewing acid and flesh and spawning smaller copies of itself in so doing, that shoggoth in every way that mattered — it was purposely chasing her, but not attempting to catch her. As if it thought that the chariot would restrict its firepower so as to not annihilate her alongside the shoggoth. And, strangely, the abomination’s gambit seed to prove right.

A nearly-choking heat ca down upon her, and Krahe felt an overwhelming wave of appraisal washing over. Thereafter, a talisman of strangely wide design caught up with her, and from its cuneiform runes issued a voice that echoed inside her skull: “Apostle. Scarlet Star. Ignite it. Halt in place. I guarantee survival. Assist in this matter – rewards await. Reply possible, this talisman.”

She wasted only a mont in consideration, rushed into action by the shoggoth’s encroaching acceleration and the sailing-by of a great acid-blob just above her head. The Scarlet Star blazed alight, and, as Rocinante ran, it carved a channel into the earth, spinning the expanding force-sphere by its gallop. The ground shuddered, an overwhelming numinous pressure descended, and Krahe lost all sight of her surroundings. Thunder-that-wasn’t-thunder and the ghostly sound of ten thousand n chanting carried into the heavens.

“Halt. Now,” the talisman said, and Krahe, without thinking, halted, sliding for a fair distance, Rocinante’s hooves tearing the ground as it braked. A river of golden fire stretched ahead and behind her, and the shoggoth boiled, screaming and pleading and cursing in ten dozen voices and languages. Krahe, having halted, turned around. Even as the chariot cut it limb from limb, and spewed yet further fla upon its putrescent countenance, the shoggoth resisted, fought back, dodged here and there, split apart and rged back together, attempted to have tiny pieces of itself sneak off, and none escaped the chariot’s judgnt. All the sa, despite its undeniable larger-than-life presence, the chariot was… Comprehensible. Within reach, even. It wasn’t nearly as transcendent as Talos Lemuria Al-Azif.

Before long, it was over. A burning oil slick the size of a small lake now stained the steppe. The chariot, nearly noiselessly, rode up to Krahe, looming over her with a cooling warmth, sohow, pouring out of it. The chariot was harsh and armored, a war machine, and the charioteer fused to it was of an imperious and chiseled appearance, angles and definition added where no living man had them, the very image of an art-deco overman bedecked with vaguely egyptian adornnts.

In place of a face, the humanoid half had a glass casket, full of fluid, a withered mummy suspended inside with pipes and cables joined to it. It was entirely possible that the individual interred within it had personally fought in the war against the Seven Towers System Accord alongside Igaria and Zavesh. It was this that berayed its true nature, that of a Moving Reliquary; an automaton controlled and in part powered by the remains of an ancient saint. An occult technology adjacent to and a step below fullgrafts. The spirit had long departed, but the flesh yet seethed with virtue and divinity, an imprint of the identity remained, and so war engines such as this one had been wrought in ancient tis to give new life to these revenants.

As she beheld its countenance, and felt its presence wash over her, Krahe knew that, were she to peer into the astral, she would instantaneously know this entity’s na, just as she had learned of Talos Lemuria Al-Azif. At the sa ti, sothing in her gut told her it would be the height of foolishness to do so this up-close, like staring into the sun. Or, in this case, a fusion torch.

“Reward. Choose. Three choices, no more,” thundered the chariot.

“Theurgic inks. Writings on theurgy. Writings on warding,” she answered right away. Several seconds passed in silence.

“Wise. It is done,” it thundered once again. Three uniform boxes of dark stone flew out, each carried by a talisman fixed to its underside. Not waiting for her, the reliquary turned and left, speaking one last ti through its talisman as the papyrus-like material burned up. “Go forth into the far reaches. Be quick in your dealings. The beasts of the deep grow uneasy. The war of gods and demons approaches the realm of n once again.”

The remainder of her trek to the rendezvous point with her compatriots went without incident. Having been delayed, she arrived sowhat later that she had wished, but that was fine. Only, now that she approached, and focused her sight into the distance, she wondered if she was seeing double, perhaps a mirage. But no. There were not three, nor six, but nine people there, in the hollow shell of that ruin. Naturally, three were Casus, Yao Fu, and Shavren. But who were the other six? That wide-shouldered, tall man, the woman by his side, and that wretched figure next to them, not to ntion the figures she couldn’t quite make out? Irritation bubbled up in her gut, and with it, questions waiting to be spat.