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K'Chain Che'Malle

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on August 1, 2010 at 6:15:06 pm
 

The K'Chain Che'malle

 

Race: K'Chain Che'Malle

Also known as:

Warren: Kaschan

Further info: Supposedly extinct.

One of the Elder Races.


 

The K'Chain Che'Malle are an ancient reptilian race long thought to be extinct, living in hive-like societies with a Matron. K'Chain Che'malle possessed both advanced technology and formidable sorcery, yielding such results as Skykeeps and anti-gravitational effects. They eventually colonized nearly all the continents across the planet. The entire race was eventually nearly entirely wiped out by a combination of internal conflicts between sub-species of the race and invasions from the Tiste races.

 


K’Chain Che'Malle (non-human): extinct mythical people (one of the Four Founding Races) (GotM, Glossary)

 

General Description

 

How to describe such a demonic entity?  When upright, it would have balanced on two hugely muscled hind legs, reminiscent to that of a shaba, the flightless bird found on the isles of the Draconean Archipelago, yet in comparison much larger here.  The hip level of the fiend, when standing, would have been at a man’s eye level.  Long-tailed, the weight of the fiend’s torso evenly balanced by its hips, thrusting the long neck and head far forward, the spine made horizontal.  Two long forelimbs, thickly bound in muscle and hardened scales providing natural armour, ended, not in grasping talons or hands, but enormous swords, iron-bladed, that seemed fused,metal to bone, with the wrists.  The head was snouted, like that of a crococdile, such as those found in the mud of the southern shoreline of the Bluerose Sea, yet again, here much larger.  Desiccation had peeled the lips back to reveal jagged rows of fangs, each one dagger-long.  The eyes, clouded with approaching death, were nonetheless uncanny and alien to our senses.

The Atri-Preda, bold as ever, strode forward to deliver the fiend from its suffering, with a sword thrust into the soft tissue of its throat.  With this fatal wound, the fiend loosed a death cry that struck us with pain, for the sound it voiced was beyond our range of hearing, yet it burst in our skulls with such ferocity that blood was drivenfrom our nostrils, eyes and ears. -     Factor Breneda Anict  -         Expedition into the Wildland-  Official Annals of Pufanan Ibyris

 

K'ell Hunters

 

K'rul: 'K’ell Hunters, these ones. Firstborn of every brood. The Matron’s own children.' (MoI UKTpb p.197)

 

'Flat, wide, fang-bristling faces – sickly pale like snake bellies – emerged from the darkness. Eyes empty pits, the heads seemed to hover for a moment, as if suspended, at a height twice that of a man. Huge

black-pocked iron swords slid into the light. The blades were fused to the creatures’ wrists – no hands were visible – and Gruntle knew that a single blow from one of those swords could cut through a man’s thigh effortlessly.

Reptilian, striding on hind legs like giant wingless birds and leaning forward with the counterweight of long, tapering tails, the undead apparitions wore strangely mottled armour: across the shoulders, on the chest to either side of the jutting sternum, and high on the hips. Skull-cap helmets, low and long, protected head and nape, with sweeping cheek-guards meeting over the snout to join and bend sharply to form a bridge-guard.' (MoI UKTpb, p. 197)

 

'Unlike the other K’Chain Che’Malle, this creature’s hide was covered in intricate markings, and bore a dorsal ridge of steel spikes running down its spine....A taloned, three-toed foot...'(MoI UKTpb,p.198)

 

Pran Chole to Itkovian : 'These K’Chain Che’Malle are what was once known as K’ell Hunters. Chosen children of a matriarch, bred to battle......The K’ell Hunters were freed from tombs situated in the Place of the Rent, called Morn.' (MoI UKTpb. p220)

 

Korlat : ‘K’ell Hunters, fortunately undead rather than enlivened flesh. Likely not as fast as they would have been. ' (MoI UKTpb, p.435)

 

Kallor : 'Only a K’Chain Che’Malle Matron could command a Ke’ll Hunter – even when undead.’ (MoI UKTpb. p.440)

 

Shi'Gal Gu'Rull : 'the Hunters – who were flavoured with mortality's sudden end at the close of ten centuries'

 

K'ell Hunters have three eyelids (DoD)

 

Glands awakened beneath the heavy armoured scales along the K'ell's spine, the first of the instinctive preparations for hunting, for battle, and as those scales seemed to lift and float on the thickening layer of oil, the innermost lids closed over his eyes, rising from below to entirely sheathe his vision. (DoD)

 

 

Sag Churok could smell blood in the air.  He heard, as well, the frustrated snorts from the two unblooded Hunters who stood, limbs quivering with the sweet flood of the Nectar of Slaying that now coursed through their veins and arteries, their tails lashing the air.  They had indeed lost control of their fight glands…

 

Ve'Gath Soldiers

 

Ve'Gath Soldiers stood flanking the central ramp, twice her height and in their arcane armour resembling the vast machinery of Root far below. Ornate grilled visors hid their faces save their fanged snouts, and the line of their jaws gave them ghastly grins, as if the implicit purpose of their breed delighted them. More so than the J'an or the K'ell, the true soldiers of the K'Chain Che'Malle frightened Kalyth to the very

core of her being.

 

That the Ve'Gath gave the Matron terrible pain, each one thrust out from her in a welter of blood and pungent fluid, had become irrelevant.  

 

Ve'Gath transformation for riding.

 

The two Ve'Gath waited.  Their backs were malformed, the bones twisted and lifted taut beneath the hide to form high saddles.  Something like elongated fingers – or the stretched wings of a bat – slung down the beast's flanks, the finger-ends and talons curling to form stirrups.  Plates of armour ridged the shoulders.  Lobster-tail scales encased the forward-thrusting necks.  Their helms wrapped about the flattened skulls, leaving only the snouts free.  They could look down upon a Toblakai.  The damned things were grinning at their riders.

 

J'an Sentinels

 

At the landing one last sentinel stood guard. At least a thousand years old, Bre'nigan was gaunt and tall – taller even than a Ve'Gath – and his multilayered scales bore a silvered patina that made the creature seem ghostly, as if hewn from sun-bleached mica. Neither pupil nor iris was visible in his slitted eyes, simply a murky yellow, misshapen with cataracts. She suspected the bodyguard was blind, but in truth there was no way to tell, for when Bre'nigan moved, the J'an displayed perfect surety, indeed, grace and liquid elegance. The long, vaguely curved sword slung through a brass ring at his hip – a ring half- embedded in the creature's hide – was as tall as Kalyth, the blade a kind of ceramic bearing a faint magenta hue, although the flawless edge gleamed silver.

 

Shi'Gal Assassins

 

A Matron never produced more than three assassins at any one time, and their flavours were anaethema, preventing any manner of alliance. And should one of them decide that the Matron must be expunged, the remaining two, by their very natures, would oppose it. Thus, each Shi'gal warded the Matron against the others.

 

Shi'Gal Gu'Rull, eldest among the Shi'Gal protecting the Matron(s) of Acyl - described as tall and lean - twice the height of a full-grown K'ell Hunter (often described as twice the height of a human)

Shi'Gal are bred for cunning and can potentially outlive a Matron (Gu'Rull has seen 61 centuries of life at the beginning of DoD)

The Shi'gal lifted his foreshortened snout and opened his nostril slits to scent the chill night air.

 

Gu'Rull stood awaiting him.  The towering K'Chain Che'Malle should have been clearly visible, but not a single human saw him.  When it was time to kill, the Shi'gal Assassin could cloud the minds of his victims, although this was generally only effective while such targets were unsuspecting; and against other Shi'gal, J'an Sentinels and senior Ve'Gath Soldiers, no such confusion was possible.

These humans, of course, were feeble, and for all their stealth, the heat of their bodies made them blaze like beacons in Gu'Rull's eyes.

The lead scout padded directly towards the Assassin, who waited, wings folded and retracted.  The hinged claws on its narrow, long fingers slowly emerged from their membrane sheathes, slick with neural venom – although in the case of these soft-skinned humans, poison was not necessary.

 

 It was twice the height of a K'ell Hunter, although gaunter.  Its wingspan matched that of a middle-aged Eleint, yet where among dragons those wings served to aid speed and direct its maneuvering in the air – with sorcery in effect carrying the dragon's massive weight – for this Che'Malle all lift was borne by those wings.  And the weight beneath it was but a fraction of that of an Eleint's.  

 

Towering, wings folded like spiked, barbed shoulders framing the wide-snouted head – the glisten of eyes above and below that needle-fanged mouth. 

 

Note: The Ve'Gath can mate with the Matron (DoD) and also the K'ell Hunters (DoD - Gunth Mach refers to Sag Churok as 'first love') perhaps the Matron mates with the type of K'Chain she wants to produce as offspring? but what if one isn't available? for example if all three Shigal are killed somehow?

 

Drones - see Sulkit

 

And now he found himself looking down upon a drone, a K'Chain Che'Malle unlike any he had ever seen before.  No taller than a grown male human, thin-limbed, with a mass of tentacles instead of fingers at the ends of those arms.  The broad head bulged behind the eyes, and at the base of the skull.  The slash of a mouth was that of a lizard's, lined in multiple rows of fine, sharp fangs.  The colour of the two large, oversized eyes was a soft brown.

He watched it twitch for a time, knowing the creature was simply exploring the extent of its transformation, unfurling its ungainly limbs, turning its head from side to side in rapid flickers as it caught new and strange flavours. He saw then its growing agitation, its fear.

The smell of unknown invaders.  The drone was able to gather, enclose and then discard the information that belonged to feral orthen and grishol; and this permitted it to isolate the location of the invaders.  Alive, yes. Distant, discordant sounds, multiple breaths, soft feet on the floor, fingers brushing mechanisms.

The flavours the drone had once fed to Ve'Gath were now turned upon itself.  In time, it would increase in size and strength.  If the strangers had not departed by then, the drone would have to kill them.

The ghost struggled against panic.  He could not warn them.  This creature, so flush now with necessities and enormous tasks – the great war against the deterioration of Kalse Rooted, the ghost assumed – could naught but see the clumsy explorations of Taxilian, Rautos and the others, as a threat.  To be eradicated.

The drone, named Sulkit – this being a name derived from birth-month and status; and indeed once shared by two hundred identical drones – now rose on its hind limbs, thin, prehensile tail slithering across the floor.  Oils dripped from its slate grey hide, pooled and then quickly vanished as the unseen army, emboldened, purified and enlivened by the commander it had itself created, dispersed to renew its war. (DoD)

 

Gunth Mach transformation for riding

 

…….and it was Gunth Mach whose posture slowly shifted, spine drawing almost horizontal to the ground – as if in the course of a single morning some force reshaped her skeleton, muscles and joints – and before the sun stood high she had gathered up the Destriant and set her down behind the humped shoulder-blades, where the dorsal spikes had flattened and where the thick hide had formed something like a saddle seat.  …..

Gunth Mach only made use of her forelimbs as they skirted slopes or ascended the occasional low hill; mostly the scarred, scale-armoured arms remained drawn up like the pincers of a mantis

 

 

K'Chain Che'malle war against the Nahruk

 

Kallor : 'Remnants of the K’Chain Che’Malle civilization can be found on virtually every continent on this world. Indeed, in the place of my old empire, Jacuruku, their strange mechanisms filled pits and holes in the earth – whenever my people had to cut below the surface.' (MoI UKTpb. p.439)

'The beasts appear to be reptilian, capable of breeding their own kind to specific talents. Those the Tiste Andii called K’ell Hunters, for example, were born as warriors. Undead versions are in the valley below, yes? They had no hands, but swords in their stead, somehow melded to the very bones of their forearms. The K’Chain Che’Malle were matriarchal, matrilineal. As a population of bees have their queen, so too these beasts. She is the breeder, the mother of every child. And within this Matron resided the sorcerous capacity of her entire family. Power to beggar the gods of today. Power to keep the Elder Gods from coming to this world, and were it not for the selfdestruction of the K’Chain Che’Malle, they would rule unchallenged to this day.’

'Among the records found, then, it was learned that the Matrons, each commanding the equivalent of a modern city, had gathered to meld their disparate ambitions. What they sought, beyond the vast power they already possessed, is not entirely clear. Then again, what need there be for reasons when ambition rules? Suffice to say, an ancient breed was . . . resurrected, returned from extinction by the Matrons; a more primitive version of the K’Chain Che’Malle themselves. For lack of a better name, my scholars at the time called them Short-Tails.....’

‘For the singular reason,’ Kallor went on in his dry monotone, ‘that they physically deviated from the other K’Chain Che’Malle in having short, stubby tails rather than the normal, long, tapered ones. This made them not as swift – more upright, suited to whatever world and civilization they had originally belonged to. Alas, these new children were not as tractable as the Matrons were conditioned to expect among their brood – more explicitly, the Short-Tails would not surrender or merge their magical talents with their mothers’. The result was a civil war, and the sorceries unleashed were apocalyptic. To gauge something of the desperation among the Matrons, one need only travel south on this continent, to a place called Morn.’

‘The Rent,’ Korlat murmured, nodding.

Kallor’s smile was wintry. ‘She sought to harness the power of a gate itself, but not simply a common warren’s gate. Oh no, she elected to open the portal that led to the Realm of Chaos.'

(MoI UKTpb, p.371)

 

Scabandari : ‘The K’Chain Che’Malle are all but gone – we know this. We have seen the many other dead cities. Now, only Morn remains, and that on a distant continent – where the Short-Tails even now break their chains

in bloody rebellion.' (MT)

 

Almost as ridiculous as this mosaic floor with its glowing armies.  Images of lizard warriors locked in war, long-tails against short-tails, with the long-tails doing most of the dying, as far as he could tell.  The bizarre slaughter beneath their feet spilled out into the adjoining rooms, each one, it seemed, devoted to the heroic death of some champion -- Fouled K’ell, Naw’rhuk A’dat and Matrons, said Silchas Ruin as, enwreathed in sorcerous light, he explored each such side chamber, his interest desultory and cursive at best.  In any case, Udinaas could read enough into the colorful scenes to recognise a campaign of mutual annihilation, with every scene of short-tail victory answered with a Matron’s sorcerous conflagration.  The winners never won because the losers refused to lose.  An insane war. (RG)

 

 

Skykeeps

 

First Born of Dragons Myth

 

Redmask : Seventeen legends described the war against the scaled demons the Awl called the Kechra; of those, sixteen were of battles, terrible clashes that left the corpses of warriors scattered across the plains and hills of the Awl’dan.  Less a true war than headlong flight, at least in the first years.  The Kechra had come from the west, from lands that would one day belong to the Empire of Lether but were then, all those countless centuries ago, little more than blasted wastes -- fly-swarmed marshlands of peat and rotten ice.  A ragged, battered horde -- the Kechra had seen battle before, and it was held in some versions of those legends, that the Kechra were themselves fleeing, fleeing a vast, devastating war that gave cause to their own desperation.

 

Kechra.  K’Chain Che’Malle, the First Born of Dragons. (RG)

 

K'Chain Che'Malle God

 

The K'Chain Che'Malle did not bow to worship, but when it came to the Eleint, this abhorrence weakened.  Children of the Eleint.  But we are nothing of the sort.  We simply claim the honour.  But then, is this not what all mortals do?  In grasping their gods, in carving the vicious rules of worship and obedience?  Children of the Eleint.  We name our cities for the First Born Dragons, those who once sailed the skies of this world.(DoD)

 

'The slayer, the Otataral Dragon, has been bound.  But it will be freed.  They will free it.  For they believe that they can control it.  They cannot.  Destriant, will you now give us the face of our god?' 

She whirled round.  "How am I supposed to do that?"  she demanded.  "Is this Otataral Dragon your god?"

'No, Destriant,'  Sag Churok replied in sorrow,  'it is the other.' (DoD)

 

K'Chain Che'Malle Matrons

Note: Matrons are somehow able to impart new 'flavours' to other K'Chain and humans as well. For example, Gunthan Acyl was able to impart to Kalyth, her chosen Destriant, a sort of 'percipience' (Shi'Gal Gu'Rull's musings indicate that this flavour would require constant renewal however) and Shi'Gal Gu'Rull, she 'flavoured' with wings and an additional set of eyes.

 

In an unbroken line from each mother to every daughter, memory survived, perpetuating a continuous history of experience.  Gunth Mach held in her mind generations of lives trapped in a succession of settings that portrayed the inexorable collapse, the decay, the failure of their civilization.  This was unbearable.  Knowledge was an unceasing scream in her soul.

Every Matron was eventually driven insane: no daughter, upon ascension to the role, could long withstand the deluge.  Male K'Chain Che'Malle had no comprehension of this; their lives were perfectly contained, the flavours of their selves truncated and unsubtle.  Their unswerving loyalty was sustained in ignorance. (DoD)

 

She had sought to break this pattern, with Sag Churok, and in so doing was betraying the inviolate isolation of the Matrons.  But she did not care.  All that had gone before had not worked.

She remembered half a continent pounded level and then made smooth as a frozen lake, on which cities sprawled in scales distorted even to K'Chain Che'Malle eyes, as if grandeur and madness were one in the same. Domes large enough to swallow islands, curling towers and spires like the spikes riding the backs of dhenrabi.  Buildings with single rooms so huge that clouds formed beneath the ceiling, and birds dwelt in their thousands, oblivious to the cage that held them.  She remembered entire mountain ranges preserved as if they were works of art, at least until their value as quarries for sky-keeps was realized, in the times of the civil wars – when those mountains were carved down to stumps.  She remembered looking upon her kind in league-wide columns twenty leagues long as they set out to found new colonies.  She stood, creaking beneath her own weight, and watched as fifty legions of Ve'Gath Soldiers – each one five thousand strong – marched to wage war against the Tartheno Tel Akai.  And she was there when they returned, decimated, leaving a trail of their own dead that stretched across the entire continent. 

She recalled the birth pains of the Nah'ruk, and then the searing agony of their betrayal.  Burning cities and corpses three-deep on vast fields of battle.  Chaos and terror within the nests, the shriek of desperate births.  And the sly mockery of the waves on the shores as a dying Matron loosed her eggs into the surf in the mad hope that something new would be made – a hybrid of virtues with all the flaws discarded.

And so much more … fleeing through darkness and blinding smoke … the slash of an assassin's talons.  Cold, sudden adjudication.  Life draining away, the blessed relief that followed.  Flavours awakening cruel and bitter in the daughter who followed – for nothing was lost, nothing was ever lost.

There was a goddess of the K'Chain Che'Malle.  Immortal, omniscient as such things were supposed to be.  The goddess was the Matron, mahybe of the eternal oil.  Once, that oil had been of such strength and volume that hundreds of Matrons were needed as holy vessels. (DoD)

 

And the sly mockery of the waves on the shores as a dying Matron loosed her eggs into the surf in the mad hope that something new would be made – a hybrid of virtues with all the flaws discarded.(DoD) 

 

K'Chain Che'Malle Warren

 

Quick Ben to Adjunct Lorn : 'Now, there is no known warren attributed to the K’Chain Che’Malle, but that does not mean one never existed.” “You believe the Imperial Warren was originally the K’Chain Che’Malle warren?” The High Mage shrugged. “It’s possible, Adjunct.” (BH UKTpb. p.159)

 

‘There is light from the Stone Bowl,’ Fear said. ‘An Elder Warren. Kaschan.’

‘That warren is dead,’ Trull said. ‘Destroyed by Father Shadow’s own hand.’

‘Its children are dead, brother, but the sorcery lingers.' (MT UK mmpb. p.138)

 

‘Kaschan sorcery,’ Fear said after a time, ‘is born of sounds our ears cannot hear, formed into words that loosen the bindings that hold all matter together, that hold it to the ground. Sounds that bend and stretch light, as a tidal inflow up a river is drawn apart at the moment of turning. With this sorcery, they fashioned fortresses of stone that rode the sky like clouds. With this sorcery, they turned Darkness in upon itself with a hunger none who came too close could defy, an alldevouring hunger that fed first and foremost upon itself.’ His voice was strangely muted as he spoke. ‘Kaschan sorcery was sent into the warren of Mother Dark, like a plague. Thus was sealed the gate from Kurald Galain to every other realm. Thus was Mother Dark driven into the very core of the Abyss, witness to an endless swirl of light surrounding her – all that she would one day devour, until the last speck of matter vanishes into her. Annihilating Mother Dark. Thus the Kaschan, who are long dead, set upon Mother Dark a ritual that will end in her murder. When all Light is gone. When there is naught to cast Shadow, and so Shadow too is doomed to die.' (MT UK mmpb, p.139)

‘When Scabandari Bloodeye discovered what they had done, it was too late. The end, the death of the Abyss, cannot be averted. The journey of all that exists repeats on every scale, brothers. From those realms too small for us to see, to the Abyss itself. The Kaschan locked all things into mortality, into the relentless plunge towards extinction. This was their vengeance. An act born, perhaps, of despair. Or the

fiercest hatred imaginable. Witness to their own extinction, they forced all else to share that fate.’(MT UK mmpb, p.139)

 

K'Chain Cities and constructs 

 

‘You have come to the place called Morn,’ Pran Chole interjected, his voice cold. ‘To the ruins of an ancient city—’

‘Jaghut—’

‘Not Jaghut! This tower, yes, but it was built long afterward, in the time between the city’s destruction and the T’ol Ara’d – this flow of lava which but buried something already dead.’ He raised a hand, pointed

towards the suspended gate. ‘It was this – this wounding – that destroyed the city, Kilava…….

………‘This city, then. Who built it.’

‘K’Chain Che’Malle.’ (MoI)

 

On the subcontinent of Stratem, beyond Korelri’s

south range, can be found a vast peninsula where

even the gods do not tread. Reaching to each coast,

encompassing an area of thousands of square leagues,

stretches a vast plaza. Aye, dear readers, there is

no other word for it. Fashion this in your mind:

near-seamless flagstones, unmarred by age and

of grey, almost black, stone. Rippled lines of

dark dust, minuscule dunes heaped by the moaning

winds, these are all that break the breathless

monotony. Who laid such stones?

Should we give credence to Gothos’s hoary

tome, his glorious ‘Folly’? Should we attach

a dread name to the makers of this plaza? If

we must, then that name is K’Chain Che’Malle.

Who, then, were the K’Chain Che’Malle? An

Elder Race, or so Gothos tells. Extinct even before

the rise of the Jaghut, the T’lan Imass, the ForkrulAssail.

Truth? Ah, if so, then these stones were

laid down half a million – perhaps more – years

ago. In the opinion of this chronicler, what utter

nonsense.

My Endless Travels

Esslee Monot (the Dubious) 

 

General References 

 

Pran Chole : 'The K’chain Che’Malle are no more – the ice spoke to them with words of death' (GotM UKTpb, p.261)

 

'Here, on Jacuruku, in the shadow of long-dead K’Chain Che’Malle ruins..' (Prologue, MoI.)

 

'Before the Jaghut ruled this world, the K'Chain Che'Malle ruled. The first Jaghut were to the K'Chain Che'Malle as the first Imass were to the Jaghut.' (MoI MMPB, p.595)

 

Lady Envy : '‘K’Chain Che’Malle . . . and Jaghut together. Is there precedence for such an alliance?’

‘There is not,’ Tool said.

 

'Kalse Uprooted, Destriant.  But there is no Matron within it.  The one who commands (Icarium) … it has been a long time since he last walked among the K'Chain Che'Malle and Nah'ruk.'

 

 

L'oric ' Not of this world either, if my father’s thoughts on the matter are accurate. He was Rake’s guest for months in Moon’s Spawn, delving its mysteries. But the K’Chain Che’Malle cities lie on distant continents.' (HoC UKTpb, p.605)

 

Osric : 'The K’Chain Che’Malle skykeeps invariably approach from the north, over water.’(HoC UKTpb. p.607)

 

Gunth Mach : 'We are reviled for revealing the face of that other god – that god of negation.  Your kind have a flawed notion of magic.  You cut the veins of other worlds and drink of the blood, and this is your sorcery.  But you do not understand.  All life is sorcery.  In its very essence, the soul is magical, and each process of chemistry, of abeyance and co-operation, of surrender and of struggle – at every scale conceivable – is a consort of sorcery.  Destroy magic and you destroy life.'  (DoD) 

 

"The slaves are loose,"  Gesler replied.  "With a few hundred generations of repressed hate to feed off.  They won't be satisfied until the last Che'Malle is a chopped-up carcass."

"And then?"

Gesler met the man's eyes.  "That's what scares me."

"We're next, you mean."

"Why not?  What's to stop them?  They fucking breed like ants.  They're laying waste to warrens.  Gods below, they're hunting down and killing dragons.  Listen, Stormy, this is our chance.  We've got to stop the Nah'ruk.  Not for the Che'Malle – I don't care a whit for the Che'Malle – but for everyone else." (DoD

 

 

Seren Pedac believed that a city had once occupied the entire mountainside, a vertical fortress carved into living stone.  She could make out what she thought were large gaping windows, and possibly the fragmented ledges of balconies high up, hazy in the mists.  Yet something -- something huge, terrible in its monstrosity -- had impacted the entire side of the mountain, obliterating most of the city in a single blow.  She could almost discern the outline of that collision, yet among the screes of rubble tracking down the sundered slopes the only visible stone belonged to the mountain itself.

They stood at the base of the trail.  Seren watched the lifeless eyes of the Tiste Andii slowly scan upward.

“Well?”  she asked.

Silchas Ruin shook his head.  “Not from my people.  K’Chain Che’Malle.”

“A victim of your war?”

He glanced across at her, as if gauging the emotion behind her question, then he said,  “Most of the mountains from which the K’Chain Che’Malle carved their sky-keeps are now beneath the waves, inundated following the collapse of Omtose Phellack.  The cities are cut into the stone, although only in the very earliest versions are they as you see here -- open to the air rather than buried within shapeless rock.”

“An elaboration suggesting a sudden need for self-defense.”.........

.........“The sorcery that destroyed this city was formidable,”  Silchas Ruin said.

“Perhaps some natural force --”

“No, Acquitor.  Starvald Demelain.  The destruction was the work of dragons.  Eleint of the pure blood.  At least a dozen, working in concert, a combined unleashing of their warrens.  Unusual,”  he added. 

“Which part?”

“Such a large alliance, for one.  Also, the extent of their rage.  I wonder what crime the K’Chain Che’Malle committed to warrant such retaliation.”

“I know the answer to that,”  came a sibilant whisper from behind them, and Seren turned, squinted down at the insubstantial wraith crouched behind them.

“Wither.  I was wondering where you had gone to.”

“Journeys into the heart of the stone, Seren Pedac.  Into the frozen blood.  What was their crime, you wonder, Silchas Ruin?  Why, nothing less than the assured annihilation of all existence.  If extinction awaited them, then so too would all else die.  Desperation, or evil spite?  Perhaps neither, perhaps a terrible accident, that wounding at the centre of it all.  But what do we care?  We shall all be dust by then.  Indifferent.  Insensate.” (RG)

 

 

 

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