This Ancient was definitely more physically brutal than the golden-haired female, but somehow not as ominous. Still, his bullox was shaking under him, and the pure physical presence that the Hammer-wielding brute held was awe-inspiring.

That, and the hobgoblin illrigger could clearly remember this one called Briggs hitting things bigger than his mount, and sending them flying like kicking skulls... while moving as fast as his mount could charge.

No, not someone to anger...

He had watched in awe as the great titans had strode off towards the south with large forces riding on their backs. Their steps should have shaken the land, but instead they ghosted away with impossibly long strides, quiet as a dream, and vanished into the once black and white desert beyond the Ring, now starting to blossom with green.

“Blackheart, right?” the Ancient said in passable goblin, sounding like an ogre, the force of each word perceptible as it broke over his skin. Blackheart stirred uneasily, definitely not liking this sensation.

“Yes, Warlord of the Goblin Tribes.” And if he said so, no goblin was going to say otherwise after the victory they’d had.

“You’re thinking of staying here and occupying some of this land.”

The tone wasn’t friendly, but wasn’t necessarily ominous, either. Blackheart scowled, as that indeed was a major topic of conversation among the tribes. They had fought for this land and bled for it, why not claim it?

The topic had really picked up after the titans walked off. They massively outnumbered the unfurred forces, why not-?

Because we would get turned into fertilizer!, he cursed at them, and they shut up.

“Well, that is a possibility, but it’ll come with conditions you probably won’t want to deal with,” Briggs said grimly. Blackheart only flared his nostrils, wishing he were strong enough to face this brutal Ancient, and knowing he wasn’t even in his league.

“What conditions?” the hobgoblin asked narrowly.

“You’ll have to work the land wisely, keep your population down, and defend it... none of which you do on your own lands.” Blackheart scowled more deeply. “There’s no animals or herds to support a nomadic lifestyle, and if you try to raid us, we’re going to wipe you, and make no bones about it, we will wipe you.”

Blackheart wanted to call it a boast, but his feral green eyes turned to the clear sky where had spun a mighty Rift to another realm, and could not find it in himself to do so. He had seen this one and the Void Brothers get thrown out of the Rift, leaving the golden-haired woman behind. Everything inside him told him that the Rift should have collapsed the instant they were out, but it had stayed open a long time... far too long...

Somewhere, he knew many, many, many gods were laughing, and knew the woman was why. The gods of the Warp were going to pay...

“In any event, that’s something for the future. You need to go south as well.”

“South? What is to the south?” Blackheart asked, shifting attentively. South... the TITANS had gone south. Why would he dare go there?

“The human empire of Rosencrux has fallen to old gods and things Outside Creation. Eastmarch, Westmarch, Southmarch, and the Central Empire are now a hellhole of things not meant to be, and things that should have died out a long time ago.” He noticed the exultation on the hobgoblin’s face without expression. “Tyrant Fuego and Emperor Mono are going to stop them from coming north. They are not stopping them from going east... and there are a lot of savage souls who could be bound to sing their praises in the east.”

Blackheart snarled, turning his neck around. “They seek to take OUR lands?” he hissed. Even the Empire was not stupid enough to do so. The times they had tried, countless tribes and clans had come together to stop them. The tales of those feasts still inspired countless raids against the Empire’s borders.

“You only ever fought the warriors of the Empire. Now, you are going to be fighting all of them: the living and insane, the unliving and wailing, and the dead enslaved. You thought you outnumbered the Empire... you are going to find out how wrong you were.”

Blackheart stared at him, huffing slowly through his slitted nose. Entire human cities, now mutated armies on the march?

Like those Warped fanatics? How many hundreds of thousands of those had been slaughtered here? And this Briggs was right... there were a lot of the weak-willed who would willingly turn to serve gods in the flesh...

“It seems I am going to be needing more troops,” he mused aloud, shifting his bullox around to look at the retreating backs of those tribes who had already begun to leave. His burning green eyes glittered thoughtfully.

This was already the most hardened force of savage warriors that had been gathered in over a generation. Further battle would make of them an army to rival that of any empire. What then might be possible?

And he would be the Warlord at its head...

“And the city?” he asked sharply, knowing, but wanting to hear the answer.

“Ours. By word of the Void Brothers, if you try to set foot in Yle Tyorm, they will wipe you all.”

And the Void Brothers never spoke false words.

“Is it possible to leave an embassy?” he asked shortly, and this Briggs snorted once.

“If they are prudent. I would suggest you actually enter Branch under flag of truce and seek to set up an embassy there. It is long past time that the East had a voice in the world other than war cries, don’t you think?”

Blackheart did, and he knew whose voice would be heard the most...

------------

Memphistopheles gasped, his chest heaving, black veins standing out on his neck, dark energies gnawing at his soul and sanity with their power and promises.

The Voice in the River’s Depths was quite disrupted in Her song, as the shades and tendrils of the Mazakeem drew about Her, and began harvesting those closest to Her.

Not done, he was not yet done... He groaned, and power surged into the Engrams in his mind, and he Teleported away through the stomach-churning dimensions of this cursed land...

----------

Errant hopped down from a three-story roof, slicing down, up, sideways, and ending in a thrust. Armored men with nests of tentacles for faces and hands now stumbled and fell as Grace sheered them through.

The stick-like figure with the burned shadows of angelic wings at the other end of the courtyard turned to look at him. His opalescent eyes were brighter yet darker, and he stood outside, under the sky, without burning.

In his hand was a Staff burning with a strange grey flame, unbesmirched by the blood of the fallen men around him. They had gathered to defend the family of the lord who had occupied this manor, and fallen in their duty.

So had the lord and his wife and children. Errant already knew the servants had shared the same fate, for there was no life in the house behind him.

“I see you have made your decision, elder,” Errant said calmly, yet sadly, settling into his stance.

From out of the shadows poured a dozen figures of umbra and silhouettes, grey of skin and black of garb, the light thinning about them as they stepped forth.

“You think I have not prepared for you?” the Excorciate asked, equally calmly, gathering power in his hands.

From atop the wall behind him, a bolt of Wrath slashed across his back, disrupting his spell and drawing a hiss of pain. All eyes turned to the woman standing there, Viana’s eyes shining silver, a gleaming Spear and Scepter in her hands.

Two bolts of Wrath intersected on the group of shades, expanding into a holy blast of Light that had the shadow-infused men backing away in fear and hate, two of them screaming as they died and were snuffed out as a shadow before the sun.

“Not at all, Elder, not at all,” Errant replied, as Klistos and Moski stood on their walls, Saber and Sword in hand with their Scepters, and made ready to fire again.

The Excorciate screamed out Words in a tongue not fit for even Fallen angels, and Wrath flared with The Light.

----------------

On the Feralbar, well East of Northgate...

Tyrant Fuego came to a halt above the banks of the River Feralbar, a wooded stretch with no habitation close by. He disliked being disturbed by most small things... unless they were good singers, of course...

He vaguely remembered this river from before his long sleep, although its course was different, and not so many traces of little things were about it. Still, the waters were familiar enough, coursing down from distant mountains, laden with the dreams and life of a great forest, then taking in the waste and detritus of human civilization as it flowed on its long course to the sea.

The things in the river, and on the other side, he had not felt for many ages. Not since the world was younger, and he strode it in all his glory and power to do battle with other elder beasts, and claim his place at the top of them.

They remembered him too, for many were younger than he, little things that had grown up, full of power, and then fallen to indolence and decay. They had seen him striding across time and the Land, unbowed and unbroken, a Tyrant even such gods as these should respect and fear, and where he sought to go, they had let him pass.

Now these old things from ages past saw this elder rise up before them again, and what thoughts came to them from the dust of eons gone, only they knew.

His burning eyes leapt across the leagues, and he saw them, and their influences, hiding behind this shifted Veil in the world, this place where the Stars Were Right, where they had crawled out of their tombs and long sleeps to walk the world again.

And he was still here!...

He chose a hill, and he set himself down there, towering over the trees and tiny things far below. He looked across at the creatures out there, unafraid, and his eyes burned at them, daring them to come and fight.

For very, very recently, he had become far more than he was long ago, too...

---

West of Northgate...

Emperor Mono took one step over the river, a mighty paw girt in lightning reaching in, and lifting out a massive vecme, a great flat boat-eating fish, a terror of the river over sixty feet long, now grasped in his hand like a guppy.

His teeth crunched down as it struggled in his grip, and he bit off its head through steel-hard bones with one smooth motion, spitting it away as the many-tons body kicked in his hand for a few more seconds before going still.

He turned back to enjoy his meal, ignoring the screaming humans a mile away panicking at his presence. He found a hill that was comfortable, cleared out some annoying trees and contoured it right with a few scrapes of his hand, shoving small hills of dirt and full-grown trees out of the way as he sat down.

His Staff thumped down, driving many meters into earth and stone, and the Tyrant’s Staff glowed with faint fire within, Runes shining a warning to those things on the other side.

About him flew the Hiidai, the winged apes, and the Sumdai, the winged monkeys, swooping away to scout and learn details for their ancestor. Elder Arg swung down, leading the Exemplars and the new young Behemoth apes towards the low bridges that crossed the six islands of the Trokkal Ford, the main road over the rivers west of Northgate.

Emperor Mono would make sure they did not pass this place. But he would not go on the attack... that was a job for Little Ones. He had declared this his territory, and over there... was not.

They would have a safe place to retreat to, while Emperor Mono sat there and conversed with the Land, and Druids, and Priests, and power quietly built in him. Across the many leagues, he and Tyrant Fuego spoke, of things only kaiju could comprehend, their eyes cold as they looked across at the old things that had given up and should have stayed dead and gone...

---------

As the new city of Branch rose upon the Silver Queen’s Road, the hyn Barony of Shadowvale was being settled between the lands of elves and dwarves, and life was returning to the Badlands and blighted lands around Yle Tyorm. While the green would grow with rampant abandon, the animal life would take somewhat longer... but it would come, now that the chaotic storms had been wiped away, and all traces of otherplanar influences with them.

Briggs began to organize the teams for the zones of the ancient city, his rules strict and firm:

Loot it to the ground, and then we close it!

=============

Zynosure, the Imperial Palace...

His dreams of strange and wonderful things were faded, and the sleeper woke from his stupor. The vapors in the room were thinned and gone, no longer able to bring upon him blessed visions of faraway lands and places...

His companions didn’t seem to be here, nor his women. He started to call for them as he staggered to his feet, but a long dormant sixth sense stopped him.

Above the cloying sweetness of the lotus, was another, old and familiar smell. His head aching as it was, it took him a moment to identify it...

It was blood...

--------------

On the road out of Westmarch, heading towards the Feralbar...

The line of men and women and wagons was moving along at a remarkably good clip, considering the circumstances and the late hour.

At the lead of this procession, an entire two-story farmhouse was gliding along patiently, a foot above the ground, unaffected by the unnatural storms.

Ahead of them, insane howls rose into the night.

Instantly dozens of lights came on around the house, turning the area around and ahead of it as bright as day. In the distance, in the woods, glowing eyes were visible as half-man, half-beast things loped towards them, only hesitating a moment at the sudden lights before them, drunk on the smell of living humans beyond.

Panels fell down and concealed weapons rose. Beneath the floating house, two flat feet descended, pushed, and the House slowly rose from the ground. Around the two porches that ringed the house, oversized Autobows rested, and sure-fingered women moved to take position at them.

Mama looked out at the incoming fallen creatures, noting that they needed magical Weapons to harm them with an Assay.

Sooo not a problem.

The great legs of the House had lifted it twenty feet off the ground, well above what the creatures could reach.

“Kill them, girls,” Mama said calmly, and hard eyes followed arcs of red leyser light to pick out their targets coolly, and flashes of light began to thrum out at the incoming creatures with highly unexpected accuracy.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thus ends Book One of Sama Rantha. There are other forces alive and moving in the world she has left behind, but that story will be another tale, centered upon other movers and players.

As for Sama, her story continues... and she will return here, have no worries!

Space, the final frontier.

In the grim darkness of the far future, in a galaxy far, far away, there came a hagchild...

QX!