Idris Lore: PART ONE

‘THE ADVICE NOT GIVEN’

On the other side of the world, the Churn has overtaken a city and forced its people into the surrounding desert …

Ages ago, the desert people learned to heat the pink, blue and white crystal sand of the desert to make glass, and from it they created a city so strong, glittering and beautiful that even the seraphim took notice.

Adagio was not like his siblings, dabbling in the idiocies of humankind – why should he, when the silly creatures died off in a blink? – but he had taken a liking to the Glass City and was not pleased to see it destroyed. Flying over the glass ruins, he watched lightning spark in the dark, oily smoke rising from the fire breath of monsters – the humans called them so, though Adagio knew that Churnbeasts were just a natural part of the world’s endless cycle of annihilation and regrowth.

He landed a safe distance away on one of the crushed-crystal dunes that gave the desert its name: The Shimmer.

~

Idris left his goat-hair tent at dawn with his weapons strapped to his back, squinting into the sunrise. He stopped short at the sight of green in the sand: Tiny leaves poked through, splitting and stretching forth as he watched. Before, spontaneous plant growth in the midst of The Shimmer would have been a wonder; now, he sighed with dread and turned to face the city. At a half-hour walk away, the choking smog and the jungle vines that tumbled away from its gates were almost beautiful. On a high dune just outside the city, he saw a_djinn_with blue wings.

He blinked to be rid of the illusion, then turned away. In The Shimmer, people knew well the dangers of mirage; once the mind began tricking itself, hope for reason was lost.

Moving between the tents and past the morning fires, he inhaled the scent of new bread and boiling tea. He eased down a goat kid that had leaped its way atop a cannon, then greeted the elders with rubbed noses and grim news: the growth in the sand meant they had but a few days to move back their line of defense.

In the blood-soaked no-man’s land between the camp and the city, he went to work dragging away the Churnbeasts that had wandered too close in the night; oftimes new terrors grew from the bones. The beasts came each night in waves, spitting, gnashing their teeth, whipping claws or tentacles, roaring or gurgling, ever bigger, with scant respite for the fighters. It had become daily life. Everything Idris had learned of the spear and chakram was put to good use.

Again he gazed toward the dune. The azure-winged man had not disappeared.

Idris closed his eyes, set the dune where thedjinn_stood in his mind, then willed himself_there.

~

Adagio could not remember when last he’d been startled, but his azure wings twitched in surprise when the desert warrior appeared before him.

“Welcome,djinn,” said Idris in a soft tone. “If you have come to join us in our war, then you are welcome at my fire.”

“Astonishing,” said Adagio, though his musical voice trilled out as if at any moment he might yawn. “I did not know magic was cultivated in The Shimmer.”

“I am not familiar with magic,” said Idris. “Mine is a skill of nature.”

“If that were so, then all men would accomplish it,” said Adagio.

“A man without fear reaches his destination the moment he chooses to depart.”

“Perhaps mankind should fear more, not less.” With a flick of his slender fingers, Adagio indicated the devastated city.

“The people live in fear now,” said Idris, his voice soft. “If the stories are true, then the emerging of horrors from the Fabled Well is the failing of your ancestors, for the seraphim and the elder dragons created the wells of power to control the release of their destructive energy.”

“Nature cannot be controlled forever. It shall destroy and outlast us all,” said Adagio.

Idris nodded. “The astronomers claimed that the lights of the heavens had aligned to create the syzygy that would wreak havoc inside the wells of power, but it had been so long that none believed them. A year ago, the Churnbeasts spilled out of the well and drove us out of the Glass City. Every day we fight, and every day we are pushed back farther. Most of these refugees have never even milked a goat, much less hefted a spear… but those who did not escape, and did not die, had it the worst.”

“Indeed, that is a horror,” sighed Adagio. “What the Churn does not kill, it swallows.”

“Tell me what can be done,” said Idris.

“There is nothing to be done except save yourselves. In another year, all you see in every direction will be predatory jungle and fearsome creatures. It is not the first time the Churn has destroyed a civilization so near to great understanding.” Adagio chuckled. “You remind me of the sisters, Rana and Ayah. They questioned me as an equal as well. I tasked them, as promising young engineers, to write a book. Perhaps some future creatures shall discover it among the city’s ruins and have a head start against their apocalypse.”

“There is a book that can save us?”

“Other civilizations have fought back the Churn, for a time, with technology.” Adagio gazed to the city again, wrinkling his sharp nose as the mists of the Churn trailed on the warm morning breeze. “But Rana and Ayah failed, as all of your kind do, when they became greedy with their knowledge, and now…” He waved a dismissive hand toward the defensive trench. “…it is irretrievable.”

“I shall retrieve it.”

Adagio’s expression, for a moment, softened. “What the Churn does not kill, it swallows,” he said again.

“Thank you for your advice,djinn.” Idris took a chakram into his fist and looked back no more. He inhaled to his belly and let out the air in a long, thin stream.

“I gave no…” But before Adagio could finish his thought, the ground beneath Idris crumbled and the sand rose in a spectacular swirl. Then the young man was gone from the dune, and Adagio could only look after him, his arms crossed, shaking his head. “Once an eon or so,” he murmured, “a mortal casts an interesting shadow.”

Idris Lore: PART TWO

‘THE HOUSE OF INSIGHT’

Idris travels through the Churn in search of his people’s salvation …

Idris appeared inside the Glass City coughing, a painful sting in his nose when he tried to inhale, his eyes pouring water, the sharp chakram dropping from his fist. He wrapped his turban around his mouth and nose but it was no respite from the swirling green-gray smog. His skin burned even beneath his sandstorm-proof clothing. He dropped to his knees, choking, blind but aware on all sides of things waking, sniffing and growling. He tried to escape in the same way that he had come, but he was gripped by fear and could not move. So he would die like this, smothered, sniveling, helpless.

In that realization, however, there was peace. He allowed death inside, and death flowed through him. His mind settled. He breathed deep, pulling the noxious gas into his lungs, and forced his eyes open to watch death come. The strength of the old destructive force filled him – or was he being drawn into it? – and he remembered the cryptic words of thedjinn.

What the Churn does not kill, it swallows.

It felt like a dream of breathing underwater. His vision cleared, and he saw that he was near to a broken fountain that still poured water forth. The water streamed out in several directions onto the ground, over books strewn everywhere. Books in stacks, books torn apart, books held by the skeletons of the dead. The fountain water ran black with ink.

Idris dropped his turban and gripped his chakram again. He drew his spear, raised himself up and walked toward a door worked with colorful, geometric glass tiles, now broken and jagged. The sign above it remained:

GOOD CANNOT BE BROUGHT FORTH
NOR EVIL AVOIDED
EXCEPT BY KNOWLEDGE

He had arrived at the House of Insight, inside which the engineer sisters Rana and Ayah had written their book.

The air tasted like strong spices now, and blood, and green things growing wild. Inside the destroyed house of learning, vines grew over ornate tiles and murals. The leaves had sharp teeth and tongues; they hissed at him but he threatened with the tip of his spear and the vines shrank back from him. Other creatures scuttled away: overgrown insects with snapping claws and horn-backed reptiles the like of which he’d never seen. He moved nevertheless through room after room, determined but lost. He found shattered telescopes attached to windows and maps crowding walls and desks. Some floors were covered in the slivers of glass that had been the tools of chemists. All the rooms were filled floor-to-ceiling with books tumbled off of shelves. How would he find one book among these thousands?

Then he came upon a tidy room. On display inside were strange machines and models of inventions: watermills and chain pumps; a robotic peacock that pecked at him as he passed; clocks of all kinds ticking in unison; and a helmet. There were weapons, too, in varied states of repair, and blast marks on the walls where some had discharged. Curious, Idris placed the helmet on his head and startled when a holographic visor appeared before his eyes that gave him a view of the room behind him and to his periphery. And then he heard whispering.

“He was not choked by the smog.”

“He passed the first test.”

Idris whirled around and the display whirled too, so that what was behind him showed in the visor. He saw no one. He moved through the room until his back was against a wall and waited, spear and chakram at the ready.

In the year of nightly battles he had seen many kinds of Churnbeasts, horrific evolutions of animals and plants, but what slithered through the door was another thing altogether, a thing fashioned after a giant serpent but made of steel and the conjoined bodies of two women, their fingers mutated to resemble viper fangs, tubes and wires grafted into their flesh as if grown there, a single glowing eye separating their torsos. It was a sickening amalgam of wildlife, humanity and technology. The serpent slithered in a spiral so that one and then the other of the sisters faced up, and Idris could see that they had been beautiful once.

Idris Lore:PART THREE

‘RANA AND AYAH’

A different kind of Churnbeast slithers between Idris and the book he seeks …

Adagio gazed into the mists. He knew well what lay at the center of the ruined city, for he had watched the Churn overtake the desert before; the earthquakes had crumbled the crystal peaks to the dust that mankind would later name The Shimmer. He had seen to the building of the Fabled Well himself, had set it in a place so hot and desolate that he’d thought it would be safe from civilization. And yet the people had come, drawn to its power. They had created beauty within the desert. He had dared to hope that the people’s ingenuity would triumph, and in the end he had been wrong.

Hope was such a silly thing. And yet he looked into the mists, hoping that the desert warrior would return.

~

“Adagio sent a man to take our work,” said one of the serpent sisters, and her eyes twitched over to a single book preserved under a glass case.

“Rana and Ayah,” Idris said, sliding his spear from his back, “The book of mechanical devices must be brought to civilization, so that the horror that has overcome you can be defeated.”

“Horror?” mocked Rana.

“Civilization is the horror,” crooned her sister.

“And if we are a horror, then so are you,” said Rana.

“The Churn is within you now, ” said Ayah, and they advanced together on him.

Idris felt the Churn streaming along with his blood, power and chaos pumping through his heart. Reflected in the visor, he saw his eyes glowing. The Churn was swallowing him… and he did not wish to resist. The Churn sang of evolution; it beckoned to him from the very center of the world. A Churnbeast sprouted within and begged to be born.

Shaking his head with violence to be rid of the evil song, he lunged for the glass case. The serpent shot forward, rising up between Idris and the book, hissing. The women reached for him with their clawed hands and fanged mouths opened wide, and Idris threw his bladed chakram, leaping away, twisting mid-air to land behind the beast. In his visor he saw the chakram returning and caught it behind his back while steel scales crashed to the ornate tiled floor.

Rana and Ayah screamed in rage and reared up again to strike; Idris threw the chakram again, set his gaze on the book and willed himselfthere. The chakram followed, slicing off one of Rana’s arms, which bled an unnatural green while she howled. The sisters whipped and coiled in their confusion. Idris did not pause; he rammed the butt end of his spear into the glass case and it shattered. The engineers attacked again, their powerful metal tail lashing with so much force that it crashed through a wall. Idris somersaulted aside with a fraction of a second to spare and landed under the women, so that Ayah’s spine loomed above him. He thrust upward with his spear and felt the engineer’s vertebrae separate and crack. Holding the spear inside her while she howled, he threw the chakram again and swung upward, using the spear as leverage, and watched the blade’s return flight through the visor as it sliced through Rana’s neck and crashed into the serpent’s eye.

The tail of the serpent thrashed without control. Idris scooped up the book and ran through the broken wall, leaped through one of the astrological rooms’ observatory windows and landed by the fountain.

For a moment he paused, wavering, hearing the song of the Churn thrum. It came from the Fabled Well at the center of the city. Stay, it whispered. You are home.

He focused the djinn in his mind as an anchor point, let all of the fumes out of his lungs, and returned.

~

The man who stumbled to the shimmering sand before Adagio was not the same man who had left. Adagio caught Idris into his arms and felt the wild thrum of the Churn inside his pulse. “Has it turned you?”

“I am myself,” whispered Idris, and closed his eyes. The book fell into the sand.

Adagio sighed. How annoying it was to care for humans. From his hands burst the gift of fire; it flooded into the dying man, radiating beneath his skin. “This will revive you, but not even I can draw the poison from your blood. The Churn will always call to you.”

Idris’ shining eyes opened and he grasped for the book in the sand. “But I have this. Now we can win.”

“Oh dear, no.” Adagio laughed, but then he met Idris’ steady, glowing gaze. His tone softened. “Your people are brave, but how will they engineer the devices in this book? With spears and goats and campfires? No; this book must go to those around the world who can use it. I suppose I can take you to the Technologists.”

Idris shook his head. He tried to sit up. “I will not leave my people to this horror.”

“There is no hope for your people without help from the rest of the world.” Beneath his hands, Adagio could feel the conflicting forces fighting for dominance: the gift of the seraphim and the curse of the Churn.

Idris clenched his fists. “I will go with you, then. But I swear I will return, with warriors and technology to fight this evil horde.”

“You are… almost impressive in your naivetè,” said Adagio. He drew up the reviving warrior into his arms, spread his great wings, and took flight.

‘ELITE FORCE’ IDRIS

The Churn whispers to ‘Elite Force’ Idris as he scouts inside the most mysterious place on the Fold: the Halcyon Well. Will he succumb to the evil that lives within him?

THE VOICES

Idris…

The tech alliance gathered at the Halcyon Well, their somber faces hidden behind masks. Idris climbed onto the lip of the well and stared through his own tactical mask into the well’s swirling mist, shaking his head to remove the voices from his mind.

Come down to us.

A mercenary clipped a rope to his waist and gave instructions. “I’ll hold onto you. Pull once for stop. Two pulls for all’s well. Three for more slack. Four or more for emergency.”

Idris climbed inside the well without a word and dangled as the rope lowered him into the mist, leaving the alliance behind. In the fog he could not see his gloved hands by his face. His helmet mount displayed only fog, and he was glad for his sealed armor.

He expected darkness, but instead a faint blue glow shone through the mist, and the whispers grew louder:

We have waited so long for you.

The mist dispersed as the well opened into a large cave, stalagmites and stalactites jutting down and up from the floor and ceiling, all pure blue crystal, glowing with the power that flowed upward from a hole blasted in the center.

He swung to land on a jagged stalagmite, then switched on his multi-spectrum optical helmet camera. The rope slackened; he pulled on it once and it stopped.

Nothing but tendrils of mist moved on the helmet display. He climbed down to the floor, yanked three times for more slack on the rope, and scouted around the crystal teeth of the cave. The voices echoed off of the walls, coming from every direction:

You left us too long. Never leave us again.

At the edge of the hole in the ground, blasted open millennia ago by the seraphim, Idris stared down into the foggy, roiling abyss of the Churn. There, half-buried in sand, he saw what he had come to find, what would power their tech for far longer than the shards mined from the surface: a crystal worn into smoothness from constant pressure of the Churn at its origin, infused with so much energy that it shone like a beacon.

The Shatterglass.

Idris plucked up the Shatterglass and then, a step closer to the hole, found another. Then another.

He yanked twice on the rope for All’s Well, and the commander’s jets stirred the glowing fog as he descended into the well.

The voices danced with his mind, beckoning.

You’re so close.

The closer he came to the edge of the hole, the more Shatterglass he found. His foot slid and one of the precious crystals slid into the hole and disappeared. Idris gathered his wits and stepped back.

Don’t go.

The sand quivered under his feet.

Movement played in his peripheral vision. He spun around and something broke free of the sand by his foot, then another, and then more burst from cracks in the cave walls and fell from the ceiling onto his shoulders: a mass of wide-mouthed worms, pulsing with blue energy, their spiny bodies as long as he was tall.

The voices.

They opened their greedy, toothless mouths and clamped onto his feet, pulling him down.

We’re bringing you home, home…

Clearing his mind, he willed himselfthere, traveling in a blink toward a stalactite with handholds, but there was not enough slack in the rope and he was yanked back. He landed just shy of the sharp point of a stalagmite below and fell onto his back, the worms threading up through the sandy surface and whipping their glowing spiked tails. His breath came fast and hard as he pulled his chakram from his back and swung. The worms on his feet split in halves and the blade returned to him covered in blue goo, but hundreds more replaced them as he yanked the dead monsters from his armor, bursting from every surface to hiss and sing:

You belong with us, with us…

Above, the commander appeared below the mist.

“Go back!” cried Idris, yanking on the rope, one-two-three-four-five-six; he yanked and yanked and it was too late. The commander dropped down into the cave.

DISARM!

Twenty meters down the Halcyon Well, Baron’s navigation and communication systems malfunctioned. He watched the HUD on his visor flash with readouts as he descended, his thrusters burning, into the glowing blue crystal cave. “Manual override,” he said, and the rocket launchers, porcupine mortars and ion cannon blinked online.

“Surface scan,” he said.

The HUD flashed warnings, revealing movement everywhere. “Locate scout,” said Baron.

“Go back!”

The HUD pinpointed Idris’ location in the center of a mass of what looked like glowing, spiked worms the size of his arm, their heads all mouth. His spear swung and his chakram flew in a whirl of hot glowing blood. “Idris!” Baron called. “Hang on, we’ll get you out!”

“No.” The chakram flew and returned again, but Idris sank into the sand, the Churn worms’ mouths locked onto his armor. “I should not have tempted the Churn. You must leave me and abort the mission.”

“I don’t leave men behind.” Baron’s jets lowered him onto the soft ground. Churn worms wriggled and writhed, bursting through the sand and slithering out of the hole at the center of the cave. They snapped their jaws and latched onto his exo-armor, spiraling their long spiked bodies up his legs as he trudged toward Idris.

“It is too late,” Idris said, his calm voice eerie and alien through his mask. He sheathed his spear and chakram and allowed himself to be pulled down.

A Churn worm snapped at Baron’s visor, its mouth stretched wide, so that his vision was blocked by the beast’s glistening maw. He peeled the worm off and threw it.

Idris mumbled to himself as the Churn worms encircled him.

Baron dug through the sand and found the rope secured to Idris’ waist. In the reflection of his visor his mouth was set in a grim line, marred by glistening worm mucus. “Listen to me, buddy. You with me?” He leaned back and pulled. “I can obliterate everything in here, but you need to get behind me. I can’t pull you out unless you fight your way up.”

Idris shook his head with violence, as if waking from a dream.

“Arm Ion Cannon,” said Baron. The HUD flashed:

CANNON ARMED.

“Lock target,” he said, and a countdown blinked on the HUD.

Baron pulled the rope fist over fist, but Idris was too deep. “Fifteen seconds!” Worms wrapped around his armored hands and the rope fell. “Don’t give up on me!”

“I cannot fight.” Idris unclipped the rope from his waist and tossed it aside. He unwound a worm from his neck, stared at it face to face, then pulled it apart with a spray of shimmering blue blood.

“Disarm Ion Cannon!” called Baron. The HUD flashed, scrambled, turned to static.

The countdown continued.

“Disarm all weapons!”

The HUD flashed:

CANNON ARMED.

MULTI-ORDINANCE LAUNCHER ARMED.

“Disarm!Disarm!” But the countdown continued to blink down.

3… 2… 1…

The cannon’s recoil knocked Baron back. The sand where Idris had been lit up with the power of the orbital strike. Rockets launched and porcupine mortars arced high, falling with deafening power. Crystal stalagmites burst into shards; stalactites cracked and fell from the ceiling. Worms, blasted to death, rained down from the cave walls with sickening splats.

Baron found his feet and cursed, scanning the killzone for life. Smoke escaped down the hole in the cave’s center as if inhaled.

“That was close.”

Baron whirled around as Idris jumped off his back. The desert warrior surveyed the damage, kicking away a pile of dead worms, unearthing a Shatterglass.

“I thought… how did you…?” Baron stuttered.

“We should not linger here. I will take however many of these I can carry.”

“The Churn is creating an electromagnetic field that is disrupting my armor functions.” Baron stomped into a gruesome mess of dead Churn worms. “If my jets function, I can -”

From deep down, far below them, came a roar full of smoke and mist, a sound that froze them both in place.

PUCKER FACTOR 10

While the rest of the tech alliance peered at their flashing monitors and beeping accessories, SAW sidestepped, stomped and stretched trying to scratch an itch on his bum. The rope he’d attached to the scout skittered and swayed around the mouth of the Halcyon Well.

“Do you have a malfunction?” The commander’s visor opened to reveal his stern scowl.

“New armor’s working as intended, sir.” He punched his fist into the overlapping metal of his back armor to no avail; the itch only burned worse.

“Watch the rope.” The commander’s visor locked back down.

“Yeah, alright.” SAW cranked the winch according to the rope signals. By the time the rope pulled twice, the itch had traveled up his spine. “All’s well,” he said. “Guess that’s your cue.” While the others watched the commander descend into the well, SAW wedged the handle of his tomahawk between his backplate and hip, trying to scratch, the rope forgotten as it yanked and yanked.

“Hey, merc,” called one of the techies, “isn’t that one of the signals?”

“I’ll tell you when there’s a …” began SAW, but then the ground shook. The techies stumbled and fell. Fog blasted high out of the well. With the tomahawk sticking out at an awkward angle from his hip, SAW lunged at the winch and cranked hard and fast.

The scorched hook emerged from the well without the scout attached.

“Well,” said SAW, hooking the rope to his own waist and grabbing his coilgun, “I’m going to go shoot at whatever they’re shooting at.”

It took three techies working the winch to lower him and his artillery into the blind foggy well. He descended fast, breaking through the fog and getting only a glimpse of the crystal cave before falling straight into the gummy, toothless jaw of the Churn worms’ giant roaring mother.

The worm gulped, and everything went dark.

His coilgun was stuck, wedged tight between the undulating muscles of the beast’s throat. The itch on his bum came back with a vengeance.

“Commander!” he screamed into his radio. “What’s your position!” He punched the beast’s inner flesh as it lunged and spat. “Commander, I need to lay down some fire and if you don’t clear out, you could catch it. Do you copy?”

Only static answered.

“Alright,” he grumbled, yanking the tomahawk free of his hip. He hacked at the squishy fleshy folds, worm blood spattering, holding his position with all his strength as the beast twisted and struggled, until crystal blue light leaked through. He put his head through the hole just in time to almost get it cut off by the chakram flying past.

“Clear out!” he yelled, and pulled back inside, sliding the muzzle of the coilgun through the hole and aiming upward.

The explosive shells burst from the rotary coilgun accelerator. He braced himself against the beast’s contracting muscle, shooting blind, one after another rocking the screaming worm, until he was out of shells.

The beast whined, yawned, and fell with a sickening thump.

He hacked his way out of the dead animal and caught his breath, dripping with goo. He kicked at the worm’s blown-open head, then surveyed the baby worms laying in coiled, bloody death on the sand. He cracked his neck.

The scout and the commander stared at him as he tucked the tomahawk back in place. “Bloody hell! Pucker factor of ten, this,” he said.

“Well done, mercenary,” said the commander.

“Indeed,” said the scout. “That was astounding.”

“Yeah, sure.” SAW picked up a Shatterglass from the sand and tossed it to Idris. “Grab up what you came for and let’s move out. I have an itch on my bum.”

‘HORUS’ IDRIS

The Horus King believes that Ra is his people’s one hope against the onslaught of the Churn, but Ra’s temple has disappeared. Read on to discover the alternate fate of ‘Horus’ Idris, the pharaoh.

THE LOST TEMPLE OF RA

After seven nights on camelback, the Horus King of the Great House found nothing at the site of the Temple of Ra but endless green, pink and blue sand dunes whirling in the wind. The disciples who had accompanied him consulted the star charts, but they were not lost. Still, the temple was nowhere to be found.

“The temple has been lifted from the world,” surmised a disciple.

“The temple has been made invisible,” argued another.

“Ra has abandoned us,” wailed another. “Now the Churn will end us all!”

The disciples gathered in a circle and sang hymns. They consulted the old scrolls. They hypnotized one another and beseeched Ra to speak through their mouths. They argued until dawn, but the temple remained lost.

The Horus King watched without speaking, and so only he noticed the boy acolyte who, bored by the proceedings, dug in the sand and found the crystal jewel. The jewel grew and grew as the boy dug, widening from its sharp point.

“Behold,” the king announced to the disciples, “the tip of an obelisk.”

“The Temple of Ra isburied,” gasped a disciple.

“This is why the Glass City has suffered,” surmised another. “Ra is trapped beneath the sands.”

“Then we must free him,” said the Horus King. “Dig to the entrance.”

For many days, the Disciples of Ra and the Horus King dug until a door to the Temple was found and cleared.

“Stay here, and do not allow the sands to bury the temple while I am inside,” said the Horus King.

“Beware the guardian, your majesty,” warned the boy acolyte.

The Horus King turned his impersonal glowing eyes onto the boy and nodded before lifting his torch and entering the dark temple alone.