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On the landscape before hiardens and raised ays A cluster of towers rose frohts Farmland reached out from the city’s outskirts in every direction for as far as Brys could see, strange shadows flowing over it as he watched

He pulled his gaze from the scene and looked down, to find that he stood on a platform of red-stained limestone Before him steep steps ran doard, row upon row, hundreds, to a paved expanse flanked by blue-painted coluled descent He was on a flat-topped pyramid-shaped structure, and, he realized with a start, soure barely visible, ghostly, defying detail It was tall, and see up at the sky, focused on the terrible dark wound

Objects were striking the ground now, landing hard but with nowhere near the velocity they should have possessed A loud crack reverberated from the concourse between the colu had co with thicklywith a two-handed grip on the penis Shoulders and head were fashioned in the likeness of a bull A second set of legs, feminine, rapped round the beast-man’s hips, the platform on which he crouched cut, Brys no, into a wo on her back beneath him From nearby rose the clatter of scores of clay tablets – too distant for Brys to see if there riting on the as if on cushions of air before cos – cut limestone blocks, cornerstones, walls of adobe, wattle and daub Then severed limbs, blood-drained sections of cattle and horses, a herd of sooats, each one turned inside out, intestines flopping Dark-skinned hus and torsos

Above, the sky was filling with large pallid frage was co that see

Soft words spoke in Brys’s host, let loose to wander, perhaps, to witness They warred against Kallor; it was a worthy cause But… what they have done here…’

Brys could not pull his eyes fro He could see li arcs entwined about theod, Brys Beddict In its own realods Temptations…’

‘Is this a vision of the past?’ Brys asked

‘The past lives on,’ the figure replied ‘There is no way of knowing… standing here Hoe , the end – for all of us, yesterday was as today, and as it will be tomorrow We are not aware Or perhaps we are, yet choose – for convenience, for peace of esture with one hand ‘Soes, some say seven It does not matter, for they are about to beco now, burgeoning with frightening speed as it plunged earthward It would, Brys realized, strike the city

‘Thus, in their effort to enforce a change upon the scheme, they annihilate themselves, and their own civilization’

‘So they failed’

The figure said nothing for a ti flash, a detonation that shook the pyrah the concourse below S in a colu the world in shadow Wind rushed outward in a shock, flattening trees in the far the concourse The trees then burst into flame

‘In answer to a perceived desperation, fuelled by seething rage, they called down a god And died with the effort Does that ambit? No, I do not speak of Kallor I speak of their helplessness which gave rise to their desire for changeBrys Beddict, were their ghosts standing with us now, here in the future world where our flesh resides, thus able to see what their deed has wrought, they would recognize that all that they sought has come to pass

‘That which was chained to the earth has twisted the walls of its prison Beyond recognition Its poison has spread out and infected the world and all ell upon it’

‘You leave me without hope,’ Brys said

‘I a your leaders They are the repositories of poison Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you From you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge