Marhukules

Marhukules

The Unassailable
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On edge of the Greatest City There Is, Was, or Ever Will Be...​
Dunubu was considered the finest pilot the City had to offer. Though he was highly decorated in war and maneuvering MagiTec in a way that was believed few in the world could match, Marhukules preferred to have him on missions because of his ability to craft a smooth journey. He watched from his seat as the younger man sang a song to himself in the cockpit. The name of it escaped the Mansa's Hand as he cleaned his nails with a hunting knife, his leopard skin cape hanging off of one shoulder, but he knew the song well enough. A ballad about a woman so beautiful that no man or woman could ever hope to claim her. A child of the desert and of the Mother herself that danced as sand did and made love to men so well that they gave their livelihoods to the wind. For such was her spirit and her grace. And such as she was that she was impossible to grasp. A spirit herself perhaps...

Marhukules hummed the tune to himself as well, staring at his nails absently and allowing the weight of the mission to lift off of his shoulders a bit. There was death to be had, but he found peace made the bloodletting much easier made when he allowed himself to enjoy the simple things beforehand. A song. A drink. A cunt for pleasuring. Perhaps even an excerpt from the Mansa's own writings as there were few things that brought him peace as the Truth.

A shuffle. He glances behind his seat and upon seeing the Spiders arrive, he turns his attention back to cleaning his nails.

"Busy skinning another corpse, Inqu? Or has Takoumba tasked you to some other madness that made you late? ...Its been some time friend."
 
Eyes like polished knives looked to the Mansa's undisputable champion. The spill and shift of black dreads bounced with each step. The tight crisscross of their braids painted Kaikias red.

Lips, too young to know the meaning of that song that stirred the air, peeled to show sharp and hungry teeth. His skin as dark as midnight, painted with white death's ashen mask. Where that brilliant darkness showed, about neck, and bone, marked the trails of scars. Carved with proud and loving hand.

The young spider set down a long tool against the bench. Its red dyed silks whispered no sound as it rest against the seat. Nor did the bright spotted shells, so draped and tied about, give rattle or sound.

Inqu sat there, beside it.

"The Spider's silk knows no time, Marhukules," Inqu's voice a strand. "The light of the very stars sticks to it," that wove through the song of pilot and craft as the other three spiders filed in. "Yet their plan spins to motion," he leaned back against the hull of the craft. Pulled the sand colored geometry of his shuka cloth to better cover the bright gleam of mechanical arms, locked close to flesh between spine and ribs. No armor, save that cloth.

The ornithopter's gate hissed shroud-laced-steam as its mouth began to shut.

A hand tapped knuckle to the big man's shoulder. Quick as the legs of a cave spider to get away. No smile, save that bright and happy malice there in his eyes. "Is that a new pelt?"
 
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The killers get younger every year...

Marhukules looks up at the Spider's whelp and meets his bright and happy malice with a older and more weary one of his own. There was a pinch of welcome there all the same. He doesn't answer the question right and sets his dagger back into it's hilt. Grunting, he sits back in his seat and nods slowly, his brown gaze turning to the window.

"Took it in the large oasis east of Khamath Nai. The dust in the air makes the cats grow large," he says, thinking to add that the dust also makes the men greedy. His true purpose there was to put an end to raids on one of the smaller mining camps. He'd nailed the bandit leader to one of the palm trees by both of his hands. Left him there for the heat or the local Sunqooqoo birds to pick out his entrails. Whichever came first. It mattered not how the sands claimed their bounty.

"I've been told you've been seeing quite a bit of action yourself lately. The older Spiders have your name in their mouths."

The glass and ceramic wings of the dragonfly's metal plated carapace unfurl and begin to flutter. A low and quiet hum. Elegant. A sound that sends a quiet pulse through the bones and ears. Nothing like the primitive engines found in other aircraft across the world. The Ornithopter lifts off the ground as Dunubu's singing turns to a low hum. The pilot smiles to himself everytime he lifts off. The cockpit was his home and here, he was the Mansa.
 
"Khamath Nai," the younger man sounded. Syllables stretched out, as if to hang them upon the cosmic web of his memory, and see where the shimmering lines lead him. "There, the sands are rich in the mother's gifts," he remembered. Recalled some news in regards to raids hitting shard stone mines. Nod as a smirk cut across his lips. "Big cats, for big pests, eh, Marhukules?"

He craned his head away, shift beneath his patterned shuka, as the thoper buzzed to life, and the other spiders set their war-dream masks unto their faces. The ancient wooden effigies, decorated with carvings of Mansabic poetry.

What light shines across the silk, what ends there upon the bright,

Twists and turns, the snare grows tight,

With last their strength might fade, that darkness none can fight,

They were lined with dream powders. Mixtures of armonium, pollen of the Widow's Rose, and dried venoms from the Midnight Recluse. Were said to help prepare for battle. Clear the mind of any lingering doubt, or distraction. Plunge one straight into the darkness in which Takoumba reigned.

Inqu found his, tucked beneath one of the magi-tech arms at his side. Fingered the poems he had learned long ago.

"I go where the Mansa's word sends me, and I could care less what old dream spinners whisper about me from their webs," he said, testy and too sharp. Brow knit with an anger that only those who strived for perfection knew. Frustration at failure. His gaze slid sidelong to regard the champion of champions. His age too aparent on his face then. "What did they say about me?"
 
He knew the boy cared.

All young warriors cared at that age whether they wanted to admit it or not. Marhukules cared what The Prophet thought of him when they arrived with an Armada moved by unshakable truth to take the City back from the Great Usurper. The night where lights clashed in the sky and became the envy of the Mother herself and Takoumba's maw was made redder when the Prophet's forces landed and fought for their city inch by red inch and mile by bloody mile. Marhuk would never forget that bloodletting. It was one that few outside of the city's walls ever talked about, not by Mansa's mandate, but because of the horror that took place there. The most costly conflict in the history of the Greatest City There Is, Was, or Will Be.

He remembered how his heart fluttered when the Mansa placed his hand on his shoulder and the Lioness with mighty and tender hand gifted him the gold bracers on his wrists, the names of all the generals he crushed, sundered, and cannibalized in sacrifice to his holy mother forever etched in precious metal.

"What did they say about me?"

Marhukules gave the younger man a ghost of a grin, accompanied with a knowing look.

"They say he is over eager. Defiant. Haughty," he begins slowly and rises from his seat. He claps a massive hand on the Little Weapon's shoulder. "But he shows skill beyond his years. In time, he will make for a fine weaver of dreams and leader of forces... Wisdom must temper his talent."

The thopter rises from it's place in the Skyport and takes to Nzuri's realm with ease. The city becomes smaller behind them until all that is below them is the desert's golden-brown beauty. Dunubu glances back at them with his big eyes and warm smile before turning his attention back through the ornothopter's glass.

"We get there in two hours! Two hours time! Maybe we stop in the Pleasure City on the way back and get the young ones here some 'strange', Marhuk. They have the ladies with biiiiig cakes there. Boys too if you all favor that!"

"The mission first, you horny motherfucker."

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You know me, baby!"
 
Through the thrum of the armonium glass wings, the thopter's chassis hummed as the craft whirred through the air. Almost a mirage in its own right, as it's enameled body shimmered and gleamed with all the colors of the desert. A thing that looked like the distant haze of unforgiving heat, an anomaly of nature, more than the mechanical wonder it was. So set to motion and purpose.

Through the sounds of the craft, and through the great champion's words, the little weapon heard those marks against him clearest, even when the warm tone that spoke of so much promise and growth had swept over him like a hot wind. Criticisms like shards of glass still stuck in his heart.

He clicked his teeth, and tried to turn away. Sharp as the blades he carried. But that massive hand, sure in its own power still held at his shoulder. Kept him from leaving the hard truth. Leathered and scarred as it was by its own history of work. The Unassailable's story there, gripped to steady the young spider.

"Wisdom, huh?" He gave as he fingered his spider's visage. The mask of the war-dreams his seniors had already dawned. He looked up to the giant man. Lips curled with the slightest hint of something warm. "What is wisdom to a dream weaver?" he looked into the inlay of his mask. All those lines, so carefully carved into its swells and valleys. Curves meant to be as a second skin. Lined with things meant to make him and those like him braver than any man. Colder and surer in that truth all men of the Greatest City There Is, Was, or Ever Will Be, were raised to carry. "But finer thread to spin our webs with,"

Dunubu called back.

...stop in the Pleasure City on the way back and get the young ones here some 'strange', Marhuk...

"What?!" Inqu hissed, all twist and snap with lip curled in disgust. Still, he leaned closer to the cockpit. Looked to Maruhk. Shook his head with a smile of teeth. "They can't be that big," voice as young as he was. Arched a brow. "I mean, how big we talkin here?

Some of the older spiders hissed their quiets laughs from behind the cold glow of their masks. The other youngster's eyes glowed in the direction of the conversation.
 
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Gods, wisdom means everything my boy... everything.

He watched the younger man as he looked at the grooves and sigils and carvings in that mask so much like the visage of Takoumba. In his eyes there were so many stories that couldn't be shared here within the hull of this aircraft. Stories that were legend but cut deeper when one had lived them. His eyes broke away from the young killer and turned to the dunes that stretched endlessly beyond the thick glass. He had been a creature of them once. A predator that took what he desired in all of the worst ways one could fathom. How many bones had been buried and corpses strewn about before the Mansa's light reached him and made him a man of honor? Before He came and gave him something worth fighting for?

One day, he might have the time or the luxury to impart to the Little Weapon the same light that had been shed upon him. Or perhaps time would do that for them both. All the same, young Inqu would be just fine, Aja're willing. The lessons would come, a hard thing to teach when Dunubu roared and laughed his debauchery over the Ornothopter's hum.

Dunubu took his hands away from the piloting yoke of the Ornothopter for just a few seconds and controlled the steering with his knees. He held his hands out a wide space apart. Wide enough for Marhukules to know exactly what Priestess he was talking about, for those who had visited the Pleasure City often spoke of the same woman with reverence. It was so precise that Marhukules let out a laugh as he returned to his seat, a low and rumbling thing. He knew where the conversation was going.

"My boy, there is a woman... I will show you. Marhuk, club my head in if I lie," he begins, placing his hands back on the yoke of the Ornothopter. "Biiiiiiig cakes. She is in the Pleasure House of Aja're. She sits on a throne beneath a big fuckin' statue of a woman with twenty titties."

Marhukules knew from his time there that the statue was the Pleasure City's interpretation of Aja're. An aspect of sorts. She had twenty breasts. Ten for pleasure and ten for feeding the children of the desert. She held a great ring above her head with two hands. The other two carried a reef as a symbol of peace and in the other, a spear for punishment.

"You pay her, she takes you in the back and you watch them things move like water made flesh, Little Weapon. I shit you not! You lay down and I tell you... She can suck honey through hollowed bamboo stick. She's MEAN!"
 
"Dunubu, that's crazy," Inqu said through a face cracked by a smile, voice all wheeze and huff. A hand raised to try and hide the laugh there behind it. "You're crazy. Keep your damn hands on the yoke, old timer, we don't need to crash cuz your dick got too hard, thinking about some priestess," a trail of laughter still hung onto the young spider. He turned and settled back down on the bench.

"Mean, huh?" he laughed, small and to himself, "How mean can she really be?" Voice told all, he didn't believe a word of it. Not unless he could see it. And that tickle of heat there, beneath all the cool, was hint enough for all to know.

His eyes cut to Marhuk. "You seen't her?"
 
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"Mhm," Marhuk responded, the left corner of his mouth liftting up a bit as he glanced at Inqu and drifted off to nowhere in particular. Perhaps a memory.

"Last time I did was some years ago. You'd have been a little boy at that time. When we retook the city from the Usurper and fought for twelve nights and thirteen days. Mansa handed out rewards for every soul that fought in his service... Land, gold, rights to percentages of certain mines. Depending on your service. Paid for me and some others to spend a month in the Pleasure City if we wanted to... Dunubu convinced me to go."

He lazily gestures toward Dunubu, the Ornothopter's own Mansa and Nzuri's Favored as many pilots and veterans were want to call him. Men were so quick to apply a god's pnuema to what was simply skill perfected. Marhukules was certain that Dunubu spent more time flying the skies than he did on solid ground, a dragonfly through and through.

" Did more than seen't her. Let me tell you somethin', boy... There's a such thang as war against man and war against a woman. See, man'll kill you if he get lucky. Pierce your heart and you'll bleed out and die in the sand. But that priestess? ...She'll teach you that war with a woman'll drain ya soul. No knife needed. She'll suck it out right through ya cock and all the money you got with it. You'll walk around thinkin' you won til you can't buy a meal."

"Boy you better listen! Hee hee! I'd know!"
 
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Every detail that trailed out of the champion's mouth only drew the young spider closer and closer. Breath poured off his tongue and he could feel his throat tighten up.

A priestess so fine, the Mansa himself bade gift her to those most loyal. Most lethal.

"No knife-" he let the words hang. Cock and all the money you got with it. His eyes so wide they might fall out his skull.

Boy you better listen!

A snap of eyes to the old pilot. Almost startled. The laugh, too keen to be a lie. "You both lyin!" he said through a grin of his own. Shook his head and fanned the steamy dream away. "Ain't no way there's a priestess that bad out there!" he leaned back against he ornithopter's hull. Warm in the face. Little shake of his head. "War with a woman," he played over in his head. Laughed. "You both crazy,"

The other Spiders hissed their masked laughs. "You'll learn you the truth, Inqu," Old Donoro added with a nod. The broad ancient had all four arms folded before him as he rest. "Once we land in Pleasure City,"

Eraz, the second ancient, nod his agreement. "After the mission's complete,"

Inqu stared at the pair who sat in stillness and silence there after. Huffed. Nod. Dawned his mask of wardreams. Let the visions of His Web take him as he let his head fall back.

"On the sky to Pleasure City," the words thrummed through the carvings upon the mask.
 
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Marhukules watched the boy don his mask and lay his head backwards and watched him for a while more before turning his gaze to the window. He hadn't fallen asleep in an Ornothopter since the first one he'd ridden in fell from the sky and onto the streets of Miraj'Dah. And he fought himself bloody all the way to the Hanging Palaces, scarred and scarring. He did allow his shoulders to relax, though... A calm before the storm.

"The Spirits speak through fire, Marhuk," he remembered the Prophet's voice through the haze of his mind, "Their whispers have revealed to me the Ashen Grief. A powder formed from brimstone, sunstone dust, and the tears of Aja're themelves. They must be ground when the Eighth Moon is black and shrouded... When scattered upon the wind or cast from pyre-shell, it clings to flesh like a curse. It ignites not with heat, but with hatred. Skin peels in weeping layers, lungs drown in smoke that does not rise, and even the bones remember the burn. No water will smother it. No prayer will stop it. It is pain made manifest, a divine judgment wrapped in ash. And when they scream..."

His smile was serene and otherworldly. One he might have given to the Mother when his mind tread the astral and made her moan her secrets in their love-make.

"The Mother has her due..."

Dunubu spoke through the din of hushed murmurs within the Ornothopter, the glee and joy gone from his voice. It was replaced by the rough command of a Miradi officer as the Ornothopter lowered it's altitude. Marhuk could see the tight formations below. Ones he recognized all too well. Arshakan troops pulling spoils from the desert behind them. He rose to stand in the cockpit and watch Dunubu work. With the pull of a lever, the Ornothopter wings retracted and the aircraft when into a free fall. Marhukules held on tightly for a moment and Dunubu bade the Spiders strap in before his maneuver.

The fall was quick as rain.

Once the 'thopter was positioned properly, the hum of the wings thrummed through the aircraft and a compartment at it's bottom opened above the Arshakan formation. A white dust fell upon them...

"Preparin' for second pass! Arbalests at the ready!"
 

Eyes full of it. A pulsing darkness that fed from a hole in the heart. Whittled and carved deeper than any knife could ever hope to reach. A thing that needled through ribs and snaked with spine. Coiled with those very chords that ran through the whole of you.

Fingertip to toe.

The third and forth arms unfurled from beneath his shuka. Fell to his sides with a whispered hiss. The spider's blood pumping cleanly through vein and artery. Black as a moonless night.

Two left hands reached for the arbalest's coffin. The strings of spotted shells shift, moved and clinked soundless. With machine claws, he held the box, with flesh and bone he undid those bindings of conch. Let them rest against the bench, took case out of silken sheath. Opened the box and there in laid his weapon. Famabic script emblazoned there upon its timeless machine body.

Death is Promised.

Dunubu's command script rang clear through the ebb and flow of shroud that swirled between his ears and behind his eyes. Fell from his flared nostrils, only to be breathed back in by the next pull of lungs.

A mechanical shift. Weight of the thopter turned to arrow point. All of it slamming the young spider, who lifted his tool from where it rest.

Hard clank of the belly gates come open. The hiss and spray of Ashen Grief. Its stink burned so clear he could smell swirls of it through his mask. Acrid and bitter and full of everything hopeless and cruel.

Let it take their breath.

Let it spread their suffering.

"Preparin' for second pass! Arbalests at the ready!"

Four spiders rose from their benches as the wind beat against the ship so quick the whole wonder buzzed. The sides of the hull slid open. Wind slammed hard against them in its howl and roar. White haze and smoke whipped and twirled about the field below. Men falling over. Choking.

With machine claws latched on to spider holds, they hung out from the side of the thopter's body. Wind whipping across their dark bodies and setting their blood colored cloaks to snap. They raised the long bodies of their arbalest-bolt-weavers. Set their four arms to spring open. They coiled back, with clicks and hisses of ancient tech set to work. Scriptures alight as the shroud turned to salvo.

A click. A click. Click. Click.

Bolts of hot blue seared down unto the formation of soldiers. Splashed with technicolor plumes of fire that scored burns on men two and three at a time.

Second and third arms pulled back the levers. Turned the bolt and slammed it down and into place. First arm still holding the weight of their weapons. They readied the next volley.
 
Faamabic script has often been interpreted by Mansabic hearts and the unenlightened from beyond the Kaikias to be barbaric. In those same scripts, the uninitiated are said to only understand the Faamabic Endeavor through having their own blood spilled, for only the pain of reality can turn them away from their weakness. The Faamabic Mandate was the first thing Marhuk learned to read when his first master placed the old book in his hands. Every syllable was etched into his soul. Every word in the text of Kings who dedicated themselves to the art of war became cosmic law, a thing that only the foolish would flee from when presented with it's truth.

His prayers were gutteral as he stood behind the Spiders loosing their shards. Marhukules smelled the flesh of the men burning below as their flesh became as incense. As their screams in their mother tongue became no different than a Mansabic hymn on the wind. A thing that stirred the spirits of countless ancestors that found their tombs in the sand. A thing that stirred the very spirit of the Spider himself that he bade his ebon-skinned sons to come and see...

One the next pass, shards flew from Spiders' instruments yet again.

The Imperials below them choked and burned, the magic igniting the Grief upon their skin so that they burned in a myriad of impossible colors. The Unassailable held his breath before his muscles pushed him forward with the force of Nzuri's gale. He held his club above his head. His tongue tasted some of the bitter ash on the wind. He ground his teeth as he came down upon one of the men escaping from Ashen Grief's grip. His club made from the body of a Buntu tree struck forth a force unlike any other. It dented metal and crushed skull and scattered brain. Blood and gray matter found it's place on Marhukules's very skin, a substance as familiar to him as water.

He'd drank of it to sustain himself once...

Now it was but the ink that he used to paint his Mansa's will upon the parchement that was the desert. The Mother's Arena...
 
Soundless signals caught from the periphery of eyes.

One and two. Fly.

So Inqu flew. Spider's claws loosed from thopter's holds, shard bolts raining down like glass hail. Streaks of blue and purpled lightning turned fire. Could smell them burning through the atmosphere. Through the flesh and bones.

A tuck and a twist. Feet landed hard against back. Clawed arms sank in like fangs between meat an bones. The rest of him spread wide and soft. A creature's mouth made man. Knives out. Blood spilled.

On to the next one.

The second spider whirled an whipped. Donoro was a hurricane of glimmering glass whips. And the choking soldiers saw his beauty before they died.
 
In the desert, a man learned that his hands were as potent as weapon as any in all the world.

Marhuk's club made mulch of many many men. Here on this particular theater of war as it had many others, but his hands had done just as much damage. There was one young Imperial that seemed to wield his blade well. Marhukules had watched him cut through one of the Spiders even with the Ashen Grief clinging to his skin and armor like men relied on air and water to survive. It was a fist that killed him. Singular. Granite. Crushing.

His skull had practically burst into a thousand pieces when Marhukules's closed fist found the opening of his helmet. First the Marhukules felt his nose break and then split seconds later, the rest of his skull had caved in from the force. The helm that had been strapped on to his head went flying off into the desert, more shrapnel now than it had been armor. His club swept upward to cast his body aside as he charged into the fray with the Imperial soldiers slowly gaining their discipline.

"Little weapon! On me!"
 
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