To Turn The Wheel Preview
As darkness crept across the plain, Irid set down the shovel. He gave light to his hovel and watched it burn to ash, borne away by hungry winds to some charnel treasury.
His long shadow fell into one of the two fresh graves at his back as he followed the retreating light, carrying a weight which was not that of the guns on his belt. Somewhere beyond this desert of diamond dust lay Amadeus’ freshest nidus, and Irid would find it.
He kept mere paces ahead of the roiling edge of the Dream at his back, sandaled feet whispering over the glittering dunes, fine grains dimly gold in the fading light of the Hellsun. He passed fronds of crystal and steel, their blossoms like pink and inflamed eyes that followed his back, swaying in a breeze scented by jasmine and a hint of sulphur.
You will die, because of this
Irid clenched his jaw and refused to answer the voice that wheedled at his back.
You have earned this, all is your fault
The red-brick domes of a caravanserai squatted upon the sands ahead, and his stride lengthened. A serpent, vast and iridescent blue, flew sinuously from the darkness high above and curved Wildward.
All this suffering is graven on your essence
“I know,” Irid said softly, but did not slow.
Come to us, Irid, and rest…
“Come to me,” he said, “and I will find a heart to stop.”
They laughed; shattering glass and strangled songbirds. He knew they would. He knew also that they would soon bore, and find another wanderer to prey upon.
A caged imp, rotund and blank eyed, crackled alight in an orb of glass bars that dangled from a beam between two domes at the edge of the waystation. More followed, scattered across the caravanserai, and the curious low of an electric cello sounded from the largest structure. The Dream rolled over the corona of the lights like oil on water, leaving the site untouched in a bubble of luminescence, and the darkness stretched for eternity in all directions.
Truly, Irid did not fear the Nightmares or the Groundskeepers or other servants of the umbral lords, but had no stomach for riddles or gunplay now. Instead he pushed open the doors of The Hollow Cactus and scanned the room; the soft ash carpeting the floor, the sandstone blocks that served as table and benches. The band played a slow and layered melody, and the other Demons kept to themselves at their tables, in their corners. Those seated at a bar of living wood seemed the most sociable, chatting quietly. A hulking red-scaled femme in shepherd’s robes, a sinewy silver mechanic with lamp-like eyes, a stool apart.
Irid settled at the end of the bar, and waited to be served.
“Drink or tales?” the barthing said, gliding smoothly over, cleaning a glass with two hands while the other two settled on the counter.
“A drink, please,” Irid replied, a polite glance into the single large eye on their face.
The barthing looked askance at the other patrons, vast blue iris rolling.
“Have some good tales,” it said, hesitant, filling a shotglass with liquid light.
“I have no jurisdiction,” Irid said, face hardening.
The barthing nodded, passing him his drink. Irid left a coin on the counter, and contemplated the contents of his glass. Outside, the Dark howled and sang, and the band played louder.
“Hey, join us for a drink?”
Irid looked without moving his head; the silver-fleshed mechanic holding up a fluted glass, the muscular pilgrim or shepherd watching his response with slightly widened eyes, hastened breathing. Though the Law had abandoned him, still his policeman’s sense was potent - a harmless pair of locals. He raised his glass, slid from his seat, and took the stool between them.
“I’m Pelos Quick,” said the mechanic, tipping his hat though it rested, politely, on the counter beside him, “and they’re Sagacious O,” he added, gesturing to the other Demon.
O nodded, a mumbled hello between their diminutive tusks.
“I am Irid,” Irid replied, “and nothing more.”
His drinking companions exchanged a look.
“There must be a story behind that,” said Pelos, pointedly looking at the guns Irid wore.
Irid nodded, “but it is short and dull. I would much rather know what brings a sage and technician to this place so far from any shrines or workshops.”
Sagacious O boomed a laugh at that, slapping a meaty hand on the counter such that the seats shook gently and the barthing glared, briefly.
“I am no sage, Irid,” they said, leaning back to adjust their decolletage in suggestive fashion, “merely a traveler widely mistaken for one.”
“Forgive my assumption,” Irid said, sipping his drink. The light burned pleasantly down his throat and some dim echo of divinity rolled faintly through his body. He would play along.
“Nothing to forgive,” they said, “I cannot speak for my friend, but I am just following a herd wherever it may go. Eternity beckons, and so I follow.”
“I see why the mistake is made,” Irid said, and O smiled.
“For my part,” said Pelos, eagerly, “I was working at a scrapyard beyond the dunes Inward of here when I saw a craft of some kind descend in flames in the desert, and I plan to salvage it.”
“A risk, to leave a safe haven to compete for salvage in the wilderness,” Irid opined.
“That is what I said,” O agreed, “every Gremlin for days will be descending on it, to say nothing of the survivors.”
Pelos waved a dismissive hand, “I can handle a few Gremlins, I’m sure. But…” He gave Irid a sly look, “perhaps a capable warrior would take a cut of my earnings to assist.”
Irid nodded, “I am sure such mercenaries abound in this place.”
Pelos frowned, “they do, but I question their mettle - to have a former Lawkeeper aid me-”
The golden gunman fixed Pelos with a penetrating stare, but did not move from his seat, did not speak a word.
O placed a hand on his shoulder, “forgive Pelos; circumspection is not among his talents.”
Irid was as a statue, hard metal edges and unyielding stance - but he relaxed, and took another sip.
“There is nothing to forgive in an honest error,” he said. “Where next are you bound?”
The mechanic said nothing, curling on his stool.
“I go Inward from here, as the herd have settled on that side of the caravanserai to wait out the Dreamfall,” O said, “I expect Pelos will follow me some of the way, for his prize lies in roughly that path.”
Irid nodded, “then we shall be companions for a span; I go toward Pandemonium.”
O set their jaw and drank deeply of their bubbling tankard, scents of brimstone wafting free as the crust broke.
“Fortuitous or portentous, we are so committed,” they said, raising their brows at Pelos.
“So it is,” said Pelos, disgruntled, wrapping slender fingers around a glass of something clear and sweet.
“May the Principles turn their gaze from us,” Irid intoned, holding up his glass.
A solemn toast, as the band wound down, and Irid felt a terrible awareness turn briefly upon them as a shiver up his spine.
He hoped they were yet beneath further notice.
Excusing himself, Irid left the bar and listened to the sand under his feet, glanced at the roiling shadows just beyond the dome of light. Here and there tendrils reached down where the lamps couldn’t overlap, whispering and leering with many mouths, many eyes. He ignored them, and found a vacant cell - one of the small, hive-shaped domes where visitors could sleep or find privacy.
Irid made himself comfortable on the cool silks and linens, intending to pass the remaining darkness in sleep, bathed in the gentle glow of stolen moonlight woven into the ceiling.. It was not long before O brushed aside the curtain and stood in the entrance, their robes whispering open. Supine, Irid inclined his head, and saw the taut, dark plain of their abdomen, the muscular lines of their thighs.
“May I?” O asked, voice a low rumble.
Guilt and desire warred briefly on Irid’s face, mercifully obscured by angle and light, before he replied: “You too may sleep, if you wish,” he said, as he lay back.
Silence. Susurrus of fabric. “Another time,” O said, softly, and left Irid alone.
When the shadow had been driven out by the light of the Hellsun, Irid rose and stretched, then went out to sit in the light and clean his guns. The desert sparkled painfully, and he did not envy those Demons of other Circles who would be blinded to look upon it. In the distance the Ur-City was visible again, rising to meet itself.
Amadeus never acts wholly alone, lest he be made a target, Irid thought, he covets power but shuns the cost. If he is not now in Pandemonium, I will find him there.
He met O and Pelos at the gate on the far side of the caravanserai; the Breaker offered him a skewer of meat which he accepted gratefully. “Someone’s pissed off your friends,” Pelos said, gesturing with an empty hand at a domed hut where the light of the Hellsun shone through the walls as if they were nothing. From their perch on a dune, overlooking the herd of waking aurochs, O glanced back at the approaching pair.
“Escaped mortals,” they said, “fleeing whatever damnation they stumbled into.”
“Idiot,” hissed Pelos, and stomped up to join O.
“A moment,” said Irid, as Pelos gestured expansively at O and mouthed ‘I told you so’.
He went to the hut, and pushed the curtain aside to look more clearly upon the dozen or so mortals within. Already most were near death, blood draining away in rivulets or violent gouts, the stink of death heavy in the thick air. But one, Irid saw, managed to raise her head and stare at him defiantly.
“Kill us,” she rasped, “let us die free and clean.”
Irid shook his head, “it is already too late.”
“Spit on you then, Demon.”
“If you would live,” Irid said, “then you must walk in my shadow.”
He did not wait for an answer, and returned to his traveling companions.
“Ready, then?” Pelos asked, irritably.
Irid shrugged and started walking, sandals in his pack that he might enjoy the warm sands. Both his companions wore smoked glasses to protect themselves from the light. In silence, O watched the herd trundling ahead of them, and Irid suspected a mild resentment held their tongue. Pelos grew more amicable as the trek wore on.
“I’ve never seen mortals dying like that,” he said, rolling a coin from finger to finger with nervous energy.
Irid’s lip curled in disgust, “they are not dying, though they might wish otherwise. The Red Curse would kill them, if they returned to their own realm. Their very cells would split and atrophy, their organs deliquescent within them. But here they will be remade.”
“Into what?”
“Seedbeds,” Irid said.
“Still… conscious?” Pelos asked, aghast.
“Such is the fate of all mortals.”
“When I served Baron Giltbrand of the Ravening Spire, he was fond of hammering dissidents into quarrels for his beloved ballistae.”
Irid said nothing; at least a mortal would be granted the succour of madness sooner rather than later, but a Demon would suffer such a prison until the universe died again.
“I might have remained in his service, but my fear proved greater than my faith in his judgement,” Pelos admitted. Irid chose to feign deafness.
“We are followed,” O said, atop a great black stone protruding from the sands, looking back over the heads of Irid and Pelos.
“I know,” said the Lightbringer, as Pelos rolled his eyes.
A dozen paces behind, wasted and bleeding, arms outstretched as if to keep balance, a crude blindfold across her eyes, the defiant human walked carefully in Irid’s shadow where the light of the Hellsun would not fall out of respect for his station.
As they crested the dune and passed the black stone, they saw shining fragments scattered across the desert, casting shadows like sinister oases. The remnants of a flying warbarge. “Finally,” Pelos said, folding back a hand to reveal the rifle within. “Shall we?”
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