The dying galaxy Omega Centauri only managed to swallow up its most distant world, Phayton-346, seventy-five years after its supernova heart had collapsed into a black hole. Phayton-346's end was only dramatic if viewed through the lens of history, as the end of a galaxy that had borne along a number of important planets and a few interesting species. But what are species and planets? What are galaxies?
To his surprise the Numenskal had welcomed him as a guest. Taxchan crouched on his four limbs in order to look into a tiny monitor on the observation deck of GOODBYE. A scientist wearing a gas mask counted down and Taxchan watched. "Six - five - four - three - two - one." Before the masked man could even finish pronouncing the word "one," Phayton-346 had condensed into a thin white flash. Their sensors destroyed, the Numenskal's short-range monitors all went black. Taxchan was unsure about what happened next - he thought that the white line might have been drawn across space like a ribbon across a gift - and into the maw of a hungry black hole.
The explosion that had destroyed The Pure One's Earth must have taken days to complete. That's how it was at Do-Hedriya: The Mad Flag had planted its pole in the planet's crust and had sent its rhizomatic tendrils down, down, deeper and deeper until it had found Do-Hedriya's core and strangled it til it burst.
Perched atop the crown of Mu Merai, Taxchan Choth observed in stillness. First, there was only a stirring in his nerves and the titillation of watching the Flag's death-quiver. By the next morning, the stirring was a vibration that attained the level of a rumbling-tickling sensation in his organs, which lasted for two more days. Then kinetic force seized Taxchan's plasms and roared into them. The Last Dinosaur would not be shaken apart, and he was there
Mu Merai was far from Do-Hedriya. Six days after the first tremors, a swarm of burning crystals flew over Taxchan's head - Show's Over.
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Taxchan wakes from his reverie of the past. Shaking the grandiose thoughts of his being nearly the only representation of life here in this desolate universe from his head, he rises. It is the fifth day since the explosion and Mu Merai has proved to be very resilient. Each day he has worked to find the exit that Golem used, but to no avail. Each night he dreams of snakes, but can make no meaning of them. One or two more days and he’d have to resort to using the cards he brought with him for help.
As he chewed some tasty and varied plant life, he heard a familiar sound, yet it was one alien to Mu Merai.
*Clip clop clip clop*
Unmistakably a horse. Craning his neck around his food to seek the source, he sees the knight Aimery, slowly cantering forward. His lance is secured upright in his saddle, flying his colors, and his weapons are stowed, but he is in full armor.
“Bon jour great lizard, is that you?” He calls.
The iguanodon pulls its horselike head from the mass of horsetails.
Its answer is disinterested. "It is I. You do not appear to have come to slay me." Taxchan Choth remembers its manners, and pulls its body up onto two legs. "I am happy to have a guest on Mu Merai." The pause is just long enough to tease Aimery into parting his lips in response, but Taxchan's slow-moving words arrive in just enough time to prevent him from speaking. "How is your friend, who I have battled?"
"Sir James is the reason behind my visit, Thunder lizard. I had hoped to find the lady, Zesiro, but c' est la vie. He is crazed by whatever disease he has found, and her magicks has awoken in him his power over shadow. Do you understand what I mean by this, Dragon?
"I do. I learned much about your civilization, and a very little about myself, while I was imprisoned on Earth."
He falls forward onto four limbs again, shaking the ground as he lands. "Zesiro has gone. The others wage war. I do not yet know my place in this struggle. What of your ally?"
"He seeks what he craves, and since he has the blood of Amber, he finds it. Again and again. Countless worlds will fall to this contagion, and I haven't the power to stop him alone. It is a blow to my pride, but I must admit he's always been my best in combat, and now his instincts are greater, enhanced somehow. I hope with planning, and the right aid, I can capture him, and restore him to his former glory.
It is not the way of my people to ally themselves with chaos, but that has not always been the case. Assost me, DI NO SAUR, and perhaps we can find a way to assist you in return."
Although fully armored it is obvious by his tone and body language that he usually does not seek help, offer reward, or even usually ask. He strains to not make every sentence a command.
The iguanodon chews. Its beak opens, swings to the side, and then closes again.
Aimery glimpses the inside Taxchan's mouth and catches sight of conical teeth working over vegetable matter behind muscular cheeks. It seems nearly equine . . . but surely the dragon's beak could snap through a lance, and easily.
"I will help you," Taxchan says. "We are to seek him, battle him. Then what?"
"The pattern will heal him, then with years of recovery somewhere quiet he will be whole once again. I have two options, if we can restrain him. If I can break his will, I can walk the Pattern with him in our minds, removing the disease, and allowing us to leave to recouperate. If his will is strong, we must take him to the most solid remaining source of pattern. Her Holiness, the Pope, herself. Somehow containing the disease while we do so.
We will need men to distract the other feral creatures around him, whilst you and I restrain him."
"Can we not battle him in the light? He will be weak, and his hordes will hide. I know of but two forces. Both may deny us. Lady Zesiro's armies are strong" - the last dinosaur was careful not to reveal the queen's location or mission. As pointless as it probably was in the grand scheme, Taxchan was unwilling to lead Aimery and the Knights any closer to the secrets of the universal rebirth promised by the Jewel of Judgement - "but they may be walking the warpath of her mate. He ravages another Earth. Both are capable, but Ogmundr's men are relentless. If they achieve victory over the . . . bing-yan then what will stop them?"
"We can try, but he will be cunning and go to ground.
Armies enough for distraction are easy to obtain, I am only here to find a capable fighter to restrain him. I can only assume that a man or beast with your ability to change his form will have some abilities to restrain Sir James. I have heard many stories of Lords of Chaos. You could become gelatinous and melt around him or perhaps the form of a giant snake, and constrict him."
"Lord of Chaos, you say." It is difficult to tell many of an iguanodon's moods. But the high-pitched snorting-honk that Taxchan released could only have been a scoffing laugh. "I understand this much of your mythology: Lords of Chaos are less than Persons of Substance. Are there none of Substance left to assist you?"
Taxchan's beak flattens out into a duckbill and a blunt crest pushes outward from the back of its skull. The Knight probably does not recognize this new beast, this lambeosaurine with its hollow nasal sinus extending three feet behind its cranium. "I am the principle of extinction, the stone of forms. I am the shape of that which is dead." It lowers its eyes to meet with Aimery's. "And only that."
"You have been mislead, Lords of Chaos are 'of substance.' Dworkin, praise his name, was of Chaos, and we must not forget our humble origins.
Be that as it may, call yourself what you wish. The Pattern lens displays your power over your form to me. That which is you, is in every piece of you. Your form is obviously yours to command. Will you use this power to aid me in saving Sir James?"
"I will. If you know of a way that I may navigate the beast upon which we ride across the veil of universes, then reveal this to me, and we will fly to James on the back of the moon. If you do not, then say it. We will not delay."
You can almost here Aimery blinking in surprise as he looks at the ground beneath his horse's feet.
"Every shadow reveals something new. I will take the beast with us."
He sits quietly for a moment.
"Ah, it is already in motion. I take us now then to build an army. Clear a location for the marshaling of men."
After a few moments he catches his commanding tone and tries to be more diplomatic.
"Er...Please."
Taxchan Choth is pleased. Aimery's power will be its reward.
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