S.K. Blankenship

It didn’t feell like physical presence, it was not whispered prayers which echoed through the chamber of the High Command, but the ceaseless, precise ticking of the Great Orrery, a machine that calculated probability chains and outcomes. Floating above the primary console, the Rings of Calculation whirled hypnotically in their brass and obsidian rings, tracing the tumorous cracks spiderwebbing across the world’s geometry. Grand Exarch Valerius shifted at his station, every flexible muscle of his ash-grey fur itching. A Krux tall in stature, wiry muscles and held in high regaurd among his fellow krux, had long ago learned to tune out the repotus grinding of the Orrery’s gears scraping against each other. He now wished he hadnt learned too all thise years ago. The constant grind would help him sift out the thoughts now fighting in his head for urgency, but the noise grated on his sensitive ears and caused migrains. Clutched in his right fur coverd hand was the Krux Hammer, glinting metallic proofs spiraling across its head like liquid gold, half the length of him tilted with the head against the floor. It felt right in his grasp, solid, physical proof he belonged in this reality. That this reality was real, but at times… he would dream of other worlds and magnificent machines. Now everything was dissolving into entropy, the war against corruption was not going well. Across from him hunkered the Hellhound, filling the darkness with the smell of sulfur and ash breath. Bulkier than most of the Krux in attendance, where muscle and corded scar tissue met along his ebony hide their grew sickle-like horns and bone fused armor. Pitiless ember eyes like a soulless fire glowed beneath two black slits carved across his muzzle. “The variables are shifting… Valerius.” His companion growled, voice low and throaty enough to crack glass vials strewn across nearby desks.” what… huh… Oh, yes sorry, my old friend” Valarious said as if coming out of an intense thought. The giant hellhound next to him yawned and continued speaking but continued keeping one eye on the old Krux.“The darkness smells thicker these days, less like a leaky pipe and more like a breached dam.”“This is not a joking matter Cerberus.” Valarious growled at the hellhound, yet the feline leader had what seemed to be a slight raise at the edges of his lips.“Who is joking?”“You compared the end of reality to plumbing.” Valaeius said with a clenched jaw, trying his hardest to not Crack a grin during such a serious council meeting.“A problem is a problem, your majesty.” The hellhound seemed to shrug his shoulders as though it was nothing more than a factual statement that everyone should know… the facts were the facts in his eyes.The Grand Exarch peered down at the tactical projection coiling across the stone floor before him. “Manna decay possibility is increasing geometrically,” he replied, jaw scraping over dry teeth. “Cronos needs to be stopped on this plain, it is our job and why we are in this realm”“You cannot kill Cronos, only stabilize the chaos. There are too many unknowns to calculate. We are trying to balance an equation with infinite solutions, unless we quarantine the corruption, all logic in this reality will eventually… cease to compile.” “Exarch,” whispered another voice from the room’s shadowed threshold. The High Arcanist Elara stepped forward, moon-pale eyes wide and hands trembling as she wrapped them tightly around a scroll containing failed derivatives. “The council wishes you would postpone Operation: Aethielblade once more. To shape the blade, we must compress ambient manna into a singular, keen edge of pure order, with no buffer. Three of our Master Calculators are already dead from miscalculations. A broken breath hitched her throat. “Under instructions to find a way to make it work; they drove themselves to calculate incorrectly. Elaborate proof matrices built throughout their lifetimes could not handle the pressure. Their brains simply… it was horrible” She cut herself off, wringing her hands together. Valerius turned around, his Hammer catching a stray shaft of light glimmering off the Orrery’s rings. “Their core proofs were weak, Elara.” He growled, tail twitching violently behind him. “This is Total System Failure. If we do not complete the Aethielblade, there will not be enough of us left to care that the Arcanist have died. This realm will end up like the others… and we will all be lost. Do you whant to lose Palsion like we did Assention? Those experiments were not pushed far enough by us, and what happened… the people tufnec on us, after we left they turned on the dragons.” “Th… There must be another way.” she pleaded. “Something more… natural.” “Natural?” Valerius snarled, taking a forceful step towards the machine, pointing at the calculations and projections. “Chaos is not natural! It is the hard break of deviance in an ordered system; it is the White Noise that disrupts the Signal. There is no half measure for the Correction, no way to do this without costing an ultimate price.” The Hellhound lurched to his feet, four iron claws clicking together on the cold stone floor. He padded towards Valerius until he was less than a foot away, face leaning close enough that his hot exhale smelled of gunpowder and ruined battlefields.“The girl speaks truth, my old friend.” The hell hound rasped quietly, claws gripping chips of stone from the floor. “You’re trying to cage a hurricane in aglass jar, and when you’re done, you’ll have a knife sharp enough to cut reality itself in two. Once blended with the hammer it will have the power to break worlds, once the correct connection is made between hammer and soul. You could finish the sword tomorrow and find there will be no world left to save it for.” He paused, amber gaze drilling into Valerius’s own. “But I know what happens if you don’t…” He emailed a long breath. “I’ve seen the worlds where magic simply… unspools. I’ve licked chaos off my claws and it’s better to burn.” The Hellhound bowed his great head in what Valerius translated to solidarity before slinking back into shadow. “Call it, I’ll follow your strategy, Valerius. But whether we save this world or burn it down trying, I’ll follow wherever you lead.” He looked down at the Hammer in Valerius’s grip, twin tails flicking behind him. “Just don’t let that hammer fall, Exarch. There is no debugging a Broken World.” Valerius watched as another pulse of purple decay bloomed across the map, contorting and pixelating as another village was consumed. A cold feeling settled in his gut. “Begin Primary Sequence.” Valerius said evenly, jaw clenching behind his whiskers. “Recalculate all input parameters. Tonight we forge a sword.” He looked up at his advisors, every nerve ending in his body screaming at him to turn back. “This reality will not listen to reason. All it will know is Action, all it requires are Results.”“Yes Exarch, it will be done”, Elara said with a shaky breath.“Send the Gargoyles to lock down the Archives, they know their mission, tonight we forge, and in the morning, we go into battle… hopefully not for our last time.”