By Taybrook Mills
In the end it may have been The War that did it. Or
The Putrification System. Regardless, The Massive Death, the overwhelming
stench of The Massive Death, filled the lungs of the whole country swimming
like some great beast out of the air, down over their tongues and through
their veins it squeezed itself, filling their very being with the
animalistic nature of their human bodies, letting itself be pumped into
their blood, and finally pumped, pumped into their groins. It may have been
that all of the men, off to war, and subsequently dying, left their useless
bodies, and returned to the instinct that most freely possessed them, but
the lust of the massive orgy that filled Europa paralleled the war being
fought to defend the very nature of their desire, the resources of the flesh
of the Earth. It must have been The Putrification System, that really
desired it, its lust for the bodies in the end. Without it Duxai, Kung of
Europa never would have taken the Blak Forest, and fed it to the vile
machine. It was really his lust for power, to conquer, to stand atop a hill
and stare into a valley of deathbringers, row after row of Trebuchets and
Catapults, all built by The Putrification System, and the new machines that
they never knew existed, seemingly invented by the great System itself,
Gravediggers and Corpse Launchers, Gatherer Builders, The Burning Death, to
stand and order the columns of men to bring these machines to kill their
brothers. They did not know it then, how could they have ever known! That
the machines were alive. It was only much later that the elder generations
began speaking of daemonic possession, realizing much too late the inherent
life that was in The Putrification System, it's organic parasitification,
the way it decomposed the materials to create bringers of pain, only things
that brought death... it ate what had been alive, and defecated machines of
terror. Living machines that knew no other instinct, no other desire than
the taste for human flesh. The Kung never revealed the origin of The
Putrification System, it did that in it's own time, of course. His armies,
or as should be said, the daemon machines that lived only for death, brought
that death in a sweeping plague, like a putrid scythe through wheat. It was
only after his victory that the Kung, ready to inhabit his newly found land,
saw that there was nothing left to be had.
In it's wake, The Putrification System, as it
inhabits all that it creates, consumed every last resource that it
encountered, driving the soldiers like slaves chained to a locomotive. It
was only afterwards, when one cavalry division returned, led by Captain
Monroe Price, that the Kung learned of the true nature of the machines. The
Captain told of the brilliant manner of the machines, and the efficiency
with which they dealt death. As easily as a Raven may crow, they destroyed
whole cities of men and at the burning sound of their tortured wheels armies
would flee in terror. After a successful battle they passed through an entire
forest, where the true craftsmanship of the Gatherer Builders could be seen;
they felled trees as no man could and ground them into new ammunition and
parts to repair and give birth to new death. Upon leaving the forest, in
glancing back, Captain Price saw that replacing the forest was a sea of
stumps, stretching further than the eye could see. This news must have
reached their enemies. for there were times, the Captain recalled, where
they would crest a hill only to find an abandoned battlefield, banners
drunkenly swaying in the wind amongst piles of weapons and armor. In the
distance vast clouds of men could be seen fleeing, slowly drifting over a
sky of dirt. As they approached their fleeing enemies the Captain could see
that piles of men had been trampled, seemingly by their own troops in an
effort to escape. It was in this field of corpses that Captain Monroe Price
first saw the Gravediggers, though now, he recalls the name to be quite
inappropriate. Traveling in a vast herd of war machines, greater than that
of the bison of the plains, Captain Price had grown accustomed to the
enormity of the deathbringers, and they shade they brought. As they marched
through the field of death, he felt a shadow as great as night fall upon his
head, and his horse became so uneasy he had great difficulty in all his
mastery to calm it. A massive hill of wood and machinery lumbered past their
position, for what seemed to be an hour. At its base a massive rake scraped
endless bodies from the floor into the inner workings of the mechanism. It
passed, a great maneater, with no graves in its wake. It passed on in the
distance, a giant beetle, scouring the earth for food. It was after this
that Corpse Launchers and The Burning Death appeared. The Captain
apologizing to Kung Duxai said that his memories become fragmented at this
point, and though a hardened man, terror had found purchase in his heart.
Approaching the Capital, the sound of crowds of men moaning overhead wafted
by, and a great cloud of bodies filled the sky, catapulted by the machines
over the fortified walls. Screams of terror and grief sprung up, carried over
vast distances by the wind as if spreading the news of a successful
propaganda. As they neared a new sound, the shrieking wail of banshees was
heard and vast showers of flame rained down onto the fortresses surrounding
the capital. It could be seen on the ramparts great quantities of men
engulfed in flame, grabbing their unburnt brothers in an embrace of death.
The soldiers of Europa whispered later that the very corpses thrown over the
walls came to life at the touch of flame and spread the purging fire to all
living, thus The Burning Death. The night dissolved into flaming carnage and
great anxiety of war. As the sun rose on the next day, the black mark of
flame was written on all the land, and it was if they had somehow been
spared by their allegiance to the daemonic machines. The Captain realized
very quickly however, that they were of the few survivors. As soon as he
awoke he noticed that the machines had already begun to move out. Captain
Price had been informed that the Capital had been their objective, and
decided to question the General concerning his new orders. Quickly circling
the Army on horseback he could see Gravediggers moving, but no men manning
any other machines, they seemed to be possessed towards their own purpose.
Unable to accept this, Captain Monroe Price told the Kung, he approached the
closest Grave Digger. Surely, he thought, the crew running this behemoth has
been given direction. On approaching it his horse once again began to grow
quite restless, and in a flash bucked the Captain to the floor and galloped
to a distance of 200 meters from the Gravedigger. Regaining his breath
Captain Price approached the machine and circled it, only to find one pipe
on the side that he was able to climb. Disregarding the way the crew must
enter he began climbing its great exterior. Several times he was nearly
thrown off, and when he finally reached the top, found no entrance upon
which he could approach the crew. As he sat atop the great hill of a
machine, a hideous machine approached the Gravedigger. It's twisted frame
resembled that of a bramble wound tightly into a demented spring. When it
was several meters away it stopped and the roof that the Captain was
standing on began to tilt towards the machine. Beneath him the roof of the
Gravedigger began to open letting out the rancid smell of decaying flesh. In
an attempt to avoid a fall to his death, Captain Price tumbled into the
bowels of the machine and found himself a top a pile of corpses. Upon his
cheek he felt the soft squirming of a mouth filled with maggots and leapt to
his feet more quickly than he fell. Inside the machine was a supreme
darkness, and Captain Price could hear a deep voice, reverberating and
echoing in a way no man's could, with a heavy breath. It chuckled and seemed
to mock him as he stood in terror at his position. The machine continued to
tip and the Captain was forced to do a mad jig to avoid the bodies that
would smother him. He could feel the presence of a another being surrounding
him, and all of the hairs on his body stood at stark attention. Filled with
the stench of rot and smothered by the Daemonic presence, Captain price was
only driven out of shock by the view of the smaller twisted machine below.
Scrambling atop the cascading bodies Captain Price leapt upwards to grip the
opposite lip of the opening as he watched a mountain of bodies pour into the
war machine below. He hung in the balance, a river of bodies feeding the
lesser machine as a mother bird might regurgitate for her young. As the
machine began to tip up right again Captain Price admitted to Kung Duxai
that he slipped and fell into the pile of bodies below. Cushioned by their
soft, bloated flesh, Captain Price was unharmed, and madly returned to his
horse and rode straight to his men at their camp. It was then that he
realized the true nature of the machines, Daemons, inhabiting them, fed off
of the land and the dead bodies of fallen men. Already more than half of the
machines had embarked, and being a stern commander, Captain Price needed to
provide no explanation to his men when he ordered them to return home with
him.
Most taken aback by the Captain's telling, Kung Duxai of
Europa explained that this was grave news indeed, and that his story was
much different, though probably led by the same Daemons. The Putrification
System, perhaps bored with death and the making of it, began gathering most
precious minerals from the Earth to manufacture great statues of grotesque
beauty. Statues of power, that emanated the most powerful energy the Kung
had ever felt. They were placed in the courtyards of the great cities of
Europa, and brought great feelings of affection to all of the people. In the
town of Liliks, the Kung recalled, he presented the opening of one such
statue. With much ado, he had his servants remove a plush velvet covering in
front of the crowds of women gathered there, since all of the men were
engaged in war. The Statue was enormous, over ten meters high, of a several
beautiful women intertwined in such a way that no body part belonged to any
of them, and they all belonged to each other. It seemed to glow with another
worldly light, that cast a bright and youthful glow on the faces of the
women, though, the Kung admitted that there was a certain lust in their eyes
that could not be denied. And at that the entire crowd began to writhe and
squirm, like a pile of snakes in spring. The Kung stared in fascination from
the stage beside the statue as the women of the town began to rip the
clothes from each other's bodies, making their new skin their true skin. As
the carnal frenzy increased the Kung's foot nearly slipped from the stage
and he realized that he had been edging forward ever so slightly, until he
hung over the orgy of bodies below. Shaken from the enchantment he quickly
gathered what servants he could, and returned to the capital, pleased at the
success of his gift to the town of Liliks. Every town is like this now, he
explained to Captain Price, at both midday and midnight, great crowds of
women will gather and pleasure each other in the glowing light of the
statues of The Putrification System. The Putrification System, the Kung went
on, even went so far as to make me my own personal statue, would you like to
see it Captain Price?
