Older Things (independent)

N.B. This story has nothing to do with anything. I just felt I had to post something.

“Sir – sir! Come with me, sir, please.”
“What is it?” Commander Echaron barked, slamming his food-maniple down on the table. The electric field in which the food was transported stuttered; the young Zedzen quailed back from his elder's rage.
“We're receiving a communication from a Khanati ship, sir.”
“Can't the uptight bastards wait?” Echaron roared, picking up the maniple again and scooping up a lump of egju, dripping in kirro gravy. The egju screamed.
“They say it's urgent, sir. V-very urgent. Black ships that don't show up on sensors” The young Zedzen's crest flushed blue, indicating alarm. Echaron considered his egju, licked some kirro gravy from his maniple field, and thoughtfully bit the writhing creature's head off.
“Keep that warm for me.” he ordered a passing Incongruent.
“Sir.”
Echaron tramped tripedally through his satellite's corridors following the young Zedzen, though he knew the halls of Zaragorazas Exploratory Reconnaisance Staging Point better than any Zedzen alive. For five hundred and twenty-eight Zedzen years – approximately two thousand one hundred and eighteen normal years, as Zedes I was slightly further out in its solar orbit, and orbited slower – Zaragorazas had played host to no less then thirty-one exploratory missions all aimed towards the Gelian Cluster – a vast conglomerate of hot young blue stars far out on the Zedzens' home galactic arm of Galeda, in the galaxy the Zedzen called Bolase. It had been one of these missions that had contacted the Khanati – a slightly older, roughly equivalent-technology space-faring race who were not nearly as pure of morals as they liked to believe.
Some of those expeditions had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
The bridge opened up in front of him, shiny and sleek and efficient. The traditional, obsolete space-view was underscored by bank after bank of silvery monitors, panels, levers, buttons, keyboards, lights, dials, displays, LEDs and one stray egju, which survived long enough to leap happily with its two webbed feet for no apparent reason before one of the Zedzen technicians caring to the monitors absent-mindedly bit its head off.
The young Zedzen dragged a tripodal, saucer-like stand over to Echaron, its tines screeching across the polished floor.
“Mind the floor.” Echaron cautioned absently, squatting down on his three legs – not an easy feat – and using one of his three arms to depress a red button on the holographic projector.
“We recorded this message approximately four minutes ago, sir.” the young Zedzen bleated. Echaron ignored it, and pressed instead the play button.
A life-size replica of a Khanati fizzed into view, blue and marred by distortion.
“Communication to Zedzen outpost Zaragorazas.” one of the two side-by-side beaks squawked in a reasonable approximation of Lingua Franca – Zedzen Standard. “From Khanati Missionary-class exploring vessel The Light of Truth, Brought to the Disbelieving, Ma'arkha Etcaryom Monrov tel'Oristisarisi Bahanka, rank Jahark, Zedzen equivalent captain.” Echaron's crest flushed green in amusement at the Khanati's condescension. “Requesting all available forces be mobilised to come to aid of The Light of Truth, Brought to the Disbelieving. I repe - ”
“Incoming transmission!” one of the technicians brayed in a deplorable Goltafi accent. Echaron winced inside. “It's from The Light of Truth, Bro - ”
“Yes, yes, let it through.” Echaron waved one hand imperiously. The technician with the accent fiddled with a bank of controls for a moment, until the space-view began to buzz with static.
“Communica - ”
“Echaron, archon of Zaragorazas Outpost, receiving. Speak.”
“Did you not hear my request?” the Khanati squawked. The tines on the side of its bullet-like head stiffened momentarily. “I requested - ”
“I know what you requested. Why should I? Ships cost money.”
“That's all the Zedzen care about, is money!” the Khanati shrieked. “You should send ships here because if you don't... you might not be able to stop them again!”
“Them?”
“Archon! The Khanati are your allies! Aid us!”
“Who'll say if we don't?”
“You have to help us stop them! If not for our sake, then for yours!”
“I will consider it.” Echaron ended the transmission. Not one of the technicians looked up; not one questioned his calculating attitude. Ships did, after all, cost money, and the Zedzen were nothing without money.
“Knave.” he ordered. The young Zedzen, which had been crouching in a position of generic abject servility for the duration of the message, sprang onto its three feet.
“Yes, sir?”
“Mobilise the Zaragorazas defence navy.”
“Does this mean you will help the Khanati?” Echaron gave the creature a clout.
“Don't ask questions you shouldn't know the answers to. No word of this must escape.”
Minutes passed in silence. The technicians tapped away at their keyboards and LEDs and displays, and outside the window, the bulky, practical shapes of Zedzen warships began to gather together, awakening from their hibernation since the time of the Second-and-a-Halfth Zedzen-Kyrra War. But no transmission came in from the Khanati vessel.
“Sir!” A technician bustled over, as much as one can bustle on three legs. “We've found the Khanati vessel.”
“Yes?”
“It's sixteen light-minutes to the galactic north of us. But...”
“Go ahead.”
“We've scanned the area thoroughly, almost enough to tell you what each crewman on that Khanati ship had for breakfast, if they ate. We found ordnance: the signatures of plasma-fire, ion trails, micrometeorites, all on a trajectory away from the Khanati vessel, and craters, as from damage, on the Khanati ship.”
“And?”
“That's it. It's as if the Khanati ship is battling with empty space. And – with all due respect, sir – judging from the extent of damage on that ship, it's some battle.”
Some of the expeditions Zaragorazas had hosted had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
“Incoming transmission!” the technician with the Goltafi accent bellowed.
“...chon! Archon! Archon Echaron!” the Khanati commander shrieked. “Help us please! Gods be good, Archon, they've boarded us! The things I saw on the cameras – beasts of indescribable nature – help us, please, Archon! For your own sake!”
“Dispatch the fleet.” Echaron ordered the young Zedzen quietly. It vanished – for once, blessedly, without a word. The Khanati was thanking him profusely.
“...nk you, Archon, thank you. The Khanati Theocracy will be eternally grateful to you - ”
“As you said, aah, captain, it is for our sake, not yours. Goodbye.” Echaron ended the transmission.
“Sir!”
“For profit's sake. What now?” The machinist in question held up a tablet computer for review. “The fleet is ready for neutrino-drive acceleration, except for...”
“Yes?”
“We've got to enter the target co-ordinates.”
“Head for the Khanati vessel. The enemy we seek is likely in the vicinity.”
Minutes passed again. The tablet computer Echaron was holding had changed from a checklist of the fleet's preparatory progress to a map of its spatial progress, showing the blue of the Zedzen ships approaching the egg-yolk yellow of the Khanati explorer. According to the sensor, the Khanati ship was still firing, but some of its guns had dropped silent. Indeterminate objects seemed to have attached themselves to the hull.
“Sir. The target co-ordinates?”
“We can't see the profit-forsaken enemy vessel. How am I supposed to approximate co-ordinates with no input? Tell the captains to look for it by sight.”
A pause of a few seconds. The order was relayed, the flickers of ordnance beginning to fly from the Zedzen vessels towards a seemingly blank spot and then -
“Sir!”
“Sir!”
“Sir!”
A dozen messages popped up.
“ - can see them, black as night - ”
“ - blot out the stars - ”
“ - what is that - ”
“ - profit's sake – fire, dammit, fire! Fire!”
The Zedzen captains' voices melded together into one homogeneous, frightening babble. Echaron leaned forward over his tablet computer.
“ - going to circle around behind, maybe its engines will be vulnerable, if it has engines - ”
“No!” Echaron barked. “No, leave it a route of escape!”
“Copy that, sir. Arraeos, have you - ”
“Sir!”
“Go away - ”
“Sir, no, sir, it's retreating! The anomaly is retreating!”
The Zedzen captains cheered almost as one as their eyes saw what the sensor told them wasn't there accelerate away, blooded. The holographic projector in front of Echaron flickered to life again.
“Archon Echaron!” the Khanati captain cried joyously. “We are saved, and thanks to your intervention! We now have plenty of specimens to study to aid in our search for this new, belligerent race - ”
Some of Zaragorazas' expeditions had found other things as well, older things, more powerful things, more evil things, but those expeditions didn't come back. Echaron knew this.
“Fire.” he said.

The Merest Inkling Contd.

“Zorlac, this is patently ridiculous.”
“No it isn't, Zanticus. I say it isn't, therefore it isn't.”
“Yes, it bloody well is. There are no more dragons in the world.”
“An ancient legend says that they may be found – right here in Erseland, Zanticus.”
“Well, firstly, that's just an ancient legend, and they only come true in computer games, Zorlac. Given the amount of them you've played, you should know.”
“I don't play computer games!... much...”
“Secondly, the ancient legend does not say there are dragons in Erseland, Zorlac. It says that the last dragon came here to live out his days.”
“And rekindle his kindred!”
“How many seven-hundred-and-ninety-eight-year-olds have you known to rebuild an entire race?”
“Years are different for dragons.”
“Obviously. Seven-hundred-and-ninety-eight is still fairly old for a dragon!”
“Don't even think about growing a spine, Zanticus. You wouldn't know how to use it.”
“Shove off, Zorlac!” Zanticus roared, whipping around to vent the full force of his rage on Zorlac. His voice echoed between the trees on either side of the dirt trail and off the distant mountain peaks of the Urglenn Mountains proper, between the ancient bushes and dark valleys that had swallowed up entire Thursian armies without a trace, down the deep caves of the karst regions and up into the upper reaches of Elleria's troposphere.
“And what reason would a fine pair of lads such as ye have for yelling so loudly as to disturb the dead?” a voice asked.
Zorlac looked down.
A pale little face, long-haired, seemingly human, smiled sardonically up at them. The man – an Ersian, clearly – was completely unarmoured, dressed in beautifully woven fabrics of green and red, with a thick torque around his neck. This didn't matter, however, because the little Ersian had a huge sword – easily a hand-and-a-half sword for a human, an enormous claymore for the little Ersian propped against Zorlac's waist.
“And mixbloods as well. Tell me, where are ye from?”
“Kamar. I'm Kamarean.” Zorlac supplied.
“Me too.” Zanticus added.
“Really? How do I know?”
“Well...” Zorlac grimaced.
“Just kidding. Only Kamareans are so pale you shine in the darkness. Ye are lucky that your king sided with the Traditionalist Ersians, and ye are luckier still that you met me before you met Progressives. A lot of Progressive tribes can be very cruel, very cruel indeed. Oh – where are my manners? I'm Cássarix, warrior in the employ of King Trénax of the Dálcash sept. Luckily for you, I was instructed to ask questions first and chop later, otherwise you might have ended up with your head nailed to the ground.”
“That sounds unpleasant.”
“Might I ask what ye are doing here?”
“We're looking for dragons.” Zorlac answered, puffing out his chest.
“I'm sorry, I must have heard you wrong. I thought you said you were looking for dragons.”
“That's what we're looking for.”
“Well... son... you see, in these parts, when something dies, it usually – not always, annoyingly, but usually – stays dead. All the dragons are dead.”
“What about Vaseryx Goldenhide?” Zorlac retorted, referring to the dragon from their mythical guide.
“He's dead too. Now go home and try to keep clear of things that are over your head.”
“Cheek! I could pop a dragon like a pimple.” Zorlac exaggerated.
“Doubtful. Listen, son, go home. For your own sake.” Zorlac sighed, theatrically.
“I suppose I should inform you of who I am and where I want to go...”

ten minutes later

“My King? The heir to the Kamarean throne. And he wants dragons.”
King Trénax leaned forward.
“Well then, you'll want to hear about the Gabolga, the Spear of the Ersians. Or, in Kamarean, Belly-Ripper.”

* * *

The bony, tattoo-scalped man hung from the bamboo frame like a sack of potatoes, scarred and pained. He had shouted his defiance, once.
That had ended after the first three days.
Then he'd started talking.
“Tell me.” Ankh said, walking around the bony man. His all-concealing mail clanked gently as he moved. “What was that thing you summoned in the village?”
Vellarion the Demented looked up at Ankh. One eye was fused shut, a scab crusted over the eyelid. He said nothing.
“Don't tell me you're thinking of holding out again?” Vellarion closed his one good eye for a moment, then opened it again.
“Beholder.” he croaked. “Water.”
“Tell me.”
“Can't tell you if my throat's... dried shut... idiot.”
A dribble of water trickled down his throat. He coughed, a wheezing rasp that he knew would kill him if he received no medical attention.
It would kill him.
“It was a beholder.” he forced out.
“A beholder? You mean there's more than one?”
“Uncounted thousands... in the vaults of the Eks Amenur. They were created.”
“Who is the Eks Amenur?”
“Can't tell you that. Nothing you do to me can make me tell you that.” Ankh left it.
“And is – are the beholders the worst these Eks Amenur - ” Ankh tripped over the unfamiliar name “ - can provide?”
“Certainly not.” Vellarion cackled madly. He wasn't called 'the Demented' without reason. “I have seen things, my friend.”
“I am no friend of yours!”
“Ah, friend, enemy... all die. None come back. Despite what you priests preach to the people, there is no heaven to receive the souls of the good. But let me assure you – there is a hell. Oh, there is... there is a hell.” Vellarion hacked, bloody saliva splashing Ankh's mail. “I have seen it. With these two – well, one now... eye. Seen it. Yes, the Eks Amenur are the servitors of Benet – not your feeble Benet, of course, but the true Benet, the dark original. She whose worshippers the Amenurites are.”
“Who are the Amenurites?” Ankh asked.
“Who indeed? You, me, everyone... has a choice, to see the light or to see the darkness beyond the light, the darkness that is coming for us.” Vellarion coughed again and smiled beatifically up at Ankh. His teeth were red with his own blood. “There is a darkness. Yes, beyond the light, and it is Benet. The Amenurites are the disciples of that darkness, those who see the truth.” Vellarion chuckled raspily. It sounded like a death-rattle.
“And what connection have the Amenurites with the Blue Dragons?”
“The Blue Dragons? Aah, you poor deluded fool. Those Blue Dragons, those guerrillas that Shamus of Borova trained to free the poor and help the weak, and establish a state where everyone is equal and there is rich, no poor, no inequality... they are dead. Shamus of Borova lives, but his ideas wither away. The Amenurites have seized his movement and made it their own. We have made it our own! And formidable as the Blue Dragons were - ” Vellarion coughed again “ - the Amenurites are a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand times worse. For in addition to the loyal guerrillas following Shamus, we have all the creatures of the night: beholders, shoggoths, dullahans, demons... and every one of you that falls is another recruit to add to our army.” Ankh leaned closer. The firelight flickered off his polished faceplate.
“Vellarion... are you talking about the undead?”
“Maybe, Ankh. Maybe.”

The Merest Inkling

The wind, cold and parched, blowing from the deep, glimmering sea visible to the south, blew particles of sand past the white, block-like houses of Ruhigicir, into the Ruhig oasis, and through the stands of green-leaved palm trees, sprouting like weeds from a pavement, that characterised this part of Farhight. Ankh, his back to a palm, his armour gone, his square face leaning back, eyes closed in relaxation.
“Ankh! Ankh, sir!”
Ankh opened his eyes.
For a week, they had travelled east, despite the distance between Salkir and Ruhigicir being two days' camel ride. Sandstorms, sloth, numbers, and general bad organisation had contributed to their lack of progress. Half of their two hundred paighans, the peasant levies which the Farhighter Empire insisted on calling soldiers, had had their sandals fall apart halfway through the march, their being made out of wicker, like the paighans' shields and armour. Ankh suspected a well-aimed slice of cake stood little chance of piercing the paighans' armour, but anything else would shear through it. In addition, the two elephants they had brought from the plains around Ur-Qadesh, to the north of Salkir, had been violently sick on the third day; the ten chariots, fearsomely equipped with scythes that jutted out, razor-sharp, in every direction, had broken down, and three of their drivers had cut themselves trying to fix them; and the twenty Lanciars that Duke Scalax had sent from Akar had had to take off their heavy chain armour because of the fierce heat. There were no seasons on Elleria, because there was no tilt in the planet's axis; instead, the weather was ruled entirely by pressure systems. A fierce high pressure had blown north across the ocean from Tydon on the fourth day, bringing with it boiling sun and hardship.
And now Ankh was going to have to face it again.
“What is it?” he asked the paighan who had disturbed him, in Salkiri. A brown, skinny man with a drawn-on moustache, he looked nervous – as everyone in Farhight seemingly did when confronted with the western barbarians.
“Sir,” he answered – in Salkiri, very fast; Ankh had to concentrate to work out what he was saying - “we have found, ah, Blue Dragons, we think. Jurian Pasha said to tell you.”
“Blue Dragons? Where?”
Ankh dressed into his armour – scorching hot, despite the fact that he had left it in the shade – and shouted for the Lanciars he had been given as escort as the paighan told him. Apparently, a group of twenty men had been seen in a nearby village, all bearing wooden shields with a crude blue dragon painted on them, standing in the middle of the village around a man who had been shouting, partly about the communist ideals of the Blue Dragons but – oddly – mostly about some new religion the Blue Dragons were supposedly espousing. The Lanciars, all fiddling their armour into place, gathered around Ankh; his was the only white Pontifex's brush in evidence. The Farhighters had provided three mages, sorry enslaved creatures bent to Jurian Pasha's will by magical leashes, and Ankh suspected that they knew what he was, namely a wizard; but officially, the Pontifexes were only priests. If there was spellslinging to be done, let the Farhighters do it.
“Lanciar Ankh!” a heavily-accented voice shouted, accompanied by the clopping of hooves. Ankh turned, realised his helmet was incorrectly positioned, and banged it. It fell into place, the eyeholes appearing in front of his eyes to reveal a tall, handsome man in bronze scale armour on top of a mare. Behind him clustered the only worthwhile soldiers in the entire detachment: the world-famous Farhighter heavy cavalry archers.
“Jurian Pasha.” Ankh nodded, humourlessly. “You say we have found Blue Dragons.”
“Yes, yes we have.” Jurian Pasha smiled: his teeth were blindingly white, his beard oiled into an improbable Pharaonic-looking style that probably hadn't been in vogue for two thousand years. The spare child, a third son or so of Arkaryan El'satharios Jubal Dacoval naTazihim, the governor of the nome – or province – of Ruhig Oasis, Jurian Pasha naTazihim was, Ankh recalled, and young enough not to have earned any of the ridiculous train of names his father dragged around. He was handsome, brave and dashing, arrogant, headstrong and overconfident, but a good man overall, and many worse choices could have been made for pasha of the little army. Like all the nobility of the current dynasty, Jurian and his clan were descended from the Farh nomads who had descended on what had then been called Kemet. Mounted archers, the lower echelons of the Farh clans had retained their nomadic existence, serving as exclusive mercenaries to the nobility of the then-newly-created state of Farhight. Elite soldiers, they were the only equiv-tech soldiers that Ankh would have bet on against Lanciars.
“I look forward to smashing these peasant buffoons.” Jurian stated, smiling arrogantly. Those paighans present, being peasants themselves, gave him an irritated look. “I assume I can count on your aid, Lanciar Ankh.”
“I'm in the middle of the Farhighter desert, at least a day away from the nearest civilisation, with twenty Lanciars and all their equipment. It's not exactly like I'm doing anything else.”
“So... yes?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” Jurian swung down from his saddle, barely avoiding getting his foot tangled. “Now, these Blue Dragons are being suspiciously obvious.”
“Obviously.”
“So that means...” Jurian preened visibly, evidently pleased with his powers of deduction, “...this could be a trap!”
“Oh – well, yes it could.” Ankh kept a completely flat face: Jurian had surprised him. He had been expecting the average noble's-spoiled-brat approach of simply charging in with everything, but obviously Jurian was smarter than that.
“You Lanciars shall charge in, supported by my heavy cavalry. The paighans will take up position on either side of the town, in the surrounding trees; should there be a problem, they will charge in. Any questions? No? Let's go.”

* * *

Vellarion the Demented was, as his name suggested, quite, quite mad. He was also fully aware of the fact, which wasn't really supposed to happen, and of the great charisma that it gave him. It came from staring into the face of the deepest, darkest corners of the earth and walking away, though with a new set of priorities.
One of those priorites was spreading his new religion.
“I have seen the darkness!” he cried, spittle flying from his withered chops, the runes painted onto his shaven, pink-gleaming skull glittering darkly in the scorching Farhighter sun. His robes, long and coloured like dried blood, rippled in the breeze; his fingers crooked into an arthritic cage in front of his face. “There is no point in denying it! The dark gods, the gods the Soulforger locked away at the dawn of days, have chosen now to make their return, and have made the Eks Amenur their puppets. Their puppets are the Blue Dragons, and their Amenurite faith. I hear you say: you wish to be no-one's puppet! Well, I tell you, it is better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path and, I tell you true, the devil is coming, as sure as night follows day!”
“What are you blathering about?” An irate voice cut through his hyperbole. The would-be prophet wheeled around from his audience of entranced villagers from the makeshift podium he had erected, over the heads of his bodyguard, to glare angrily at Ankh, who had spoken. The Lanciar stood, arms folded, at the head of his retinue of twenty Lanciars; Jurian Pasha and his heavy cavalry stood off to one side, looking fierce.
“A Lanciar. What are you doing in the middle of the Farhighter desert?” Vellarion snapped.
“Well, I'm not really sure, but that's beside the point. You – whatever your name is - ”
“Vellarion the Demented.”
“Thank you.” Ankh answered drily, but humourlessly. “Very well, Mr. the Demented, you are under arrest for denial of the true gods of the Church of Benet - ”
“You fool!” Vellarion burst into fanatical rhetoric again. “Can't you see your feeble protectors are as nothing compared to the might of - ”
“Benet and the Soulforger are the indestructible shields of humanity, the true divinities - ” Ankh roared in defense of his faith.
“Has no-one considered the Dead God of the Desert - ” Jurian Pasha interjected.
“The Dead God of the Desert is DEAD!” Ankh and Vellarion bellowed at the samed time. Ankh continued.
“I was born a Farhighter! For fifteen years, all through the Pontifexial training, I believed he would show me the way and illumine this false bloody faith the Lanciars were pressing on me! Every day, I prayed to the Dead Bloody God of the Bloody Desert and NOTHING HAPPENED! He didn't reward my faith, he rewarded it with NOTHING!”
An awkward silence settled over the village.
“I apologise. I realise I may have revealed more than I intended to of my personal life.” Ankh said. “Nevertheless! Vellarion the Demented, I place you under arrest.”
“I think not. Blue Dragons! Prove to me your loyalty!”
The village erupted. The Blue Dragon bodyguard jumped forward, wicker dragon-painted shields ahead, rusty swords overhead. Ankh pulled out his own sword, a metre of shining Akarean steel, felt his Lanciars charge in behind him and Jurian Pasha's heavy cavalry thundering. A Blue Dragon, an uncommonly pale, mucky weed of a man with a blue dragon tattooed on his face, charged into Ankh, screaming something in some incomprehensible Farhighter dialect. Ankh took his sword on his own: the blades sparked off each other, Ankh's polished sword biting a nick into the other man's rusty battered steel. They stood like that for a moment, mailed Lanciar against wicker-armoured fanatic, swords straining against each other, before Ankh bulled forward behind his shield and slammed into the man. He careened backwards, still shouting but this time with an overtone of terror. Ankh finished him almost without thinking about it and turned to find another enemy.
Suddenly, his vision went black, stars in front his eyes, a stunning pain in the back of his head. He reeled forward, the world having gone surreal and blue in front of his eyes as the blood rushed away from his brain. He staggered around, bending just enough to take another slash on the shoulder. This man's sword, less rusty than the others, chopped through the mail, grazing Ankh's shoulder. Ankh got his shield up, took another blow on it as he got his bearings. This man was a bad swordsman, just flurrying blows wildly and leaving himself undefended, not using his shield at all. Ankh took another blow on his shield, swung his sword towards the man's legs. A scream: he was legless. Ankh put him out of his misery.
He felt a whoosh, behind him, as of another sword coming – and whipped around, not being caught on the hop this time. But this man was strong, very strong indeed. Ankh was knocked backwards, thudding heavily into the ground. He banged his head – stars flew again – he looked up. A shadow. It must be his enemy. Quickly, he closed his eyes, focused in that indescribable way that magicians must to access their power. Ancient glyphs in the Spelltongue, the archaic language the long-dead Mistocren people invented a thousand years ago to control magic with, flickered in front of his closed vision, circular serrated shapes imbued with concentric layers of meaning. A sentence in the Spelltongue, written on the surface of Ankh's consciousness: into his mind. The shadow stumbled, Ankh saw inside his head, started rearranging stuff, fiddling around, removing the Blue Dragon-ness -
Something else.
A shining beacon, or rather, a shining beacon's reverse: an all-consuming darkness, but outside Ankh's victim's mind, rather in the centre of the village. Ankh crushed the Blue Dragon's mind absent-mindedly, letting the now-infantile creature go limp, and opened his eyes to the real world.
What he saw was not reassuring.
Vellarion the Demented, scab-red robes flapping around his bony frame, the glyphs inked on his head glowing with a chaotic pinkish radiance, was floating spreadeagled in the air, as if the atmosphere had curled a windy fist about him and picked him up. Around him whipped a soot-black tempest, tendrils of blackness curling out and whipping about like a set of dragon's wings, leaving floating black particles in his wake. Central to it was a tiny sun of darkness, swallowing and billowing around the sorcerer. Incongruously, the real sun shone, white and bright, right behind it.
It was the single most evil thing Ankh had ever seen.
“No, no, no,” he found himself shouting, struggling forward – damn armour! It was so heavy - “stop him, stop him, stop him, STOP THE DAMN RITUAL, YOU FOOLS! Come on, come on, COME ON - ”
“Feast your eyes on the Beholder!” Vellarion screeched, a thin reedy pathetic noise whipped away by the intensity of the storm he had conjured. In the heart of the vortex, the world twisted and ripped, the very fabric of the universe itself splitting open in a way that really shouldn't have been possible.
Something came through.
A tentacle, pink and worm-like, tipped with a prehensile pad, quested through. Ankh rushed towards it, tripping over his armour, still screaming to stop the ritual, sword out, cutting his way through screaming Blue Dragons who tried to block him. He had to stop it, otherwise -
Oh no.
An eye, big as a man's head, blue-irised and bloodshot, above a fang-filled mouth, gaping and cruel, roped with slaver. The thing's head, on which the lone, baleful eye and mouth were, looked for all the world like a living human brain, pink and laced with barely-visibly-pulsing capillaries, red and branching. From below its mouth, a spray of tentacles, long and pink and tipped with the same pads that had come through the portal, hung like some kind of amphibian beard. The whole contraption, stretching eight feet into the air, defying every single convention of logicality that ever there was, raked the battlefield with its gaze.
The Lanciars – trained from birth, battle-hardened, brave, brainwashed, Spartan, and legendary – turned and ran. Jurian Pasha's horses shied and bucked, throwing men who ran after the horses shouting. From the trees above the village there came a rustling as the hundreds of paighans hidden there fled, smashing into the trees and shaking their leaves in their haste to get away.
Only Ankh stood, broad dark face impassive, eyes narrowed, standing with his legs braced, shield with the symbol of Akar, the crossed scythe, crook, hammer and sword, in front of him, his hand wrapped tightly about his longsword's hilt. The corpses of the Blue Dragons stacked around his feet, staining his mail with their blood.
“And what do you think you're going to do?” Vellarion smiled, squatting down relaxedly in the shadow of the hideous creature he had summoned.
“We'll see.” Ankh answered.
“Oh, give it a rest, you idiot. Beholder! Kill!”
The eye turned, looked at Ankh. Its pupil narrowed.
Ankh shifted his grip on his sword, watching the creature. Curiously, it extended a tentacle towards him, the fleshy tentacle snaking wavily through the air.
Ankh's sword flashed. The creature yanked its tentacle back, hissing, the rubbery end half-severed.
The single baleful eye narrowed.
The tentacles, three of them at once now, darted towards Ankh from different directions. He lashed out with his sword at one, caught another on his shield, felt another snake around his legs, looking for a way to trip him up – but his mail gown prevented it. He stepped on the tentacle, blocked another tentacle, slashed at another -
And could only watch as what must by now be the seventh tentacle wrapped itself around his chest, coiling and coiling and coiling and dragging him right up to the foul creature. He lashed out with his sword, struggling futilely, but more tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs, and one wrapped itself around his head, a slimy pink worm circling his helmet and blocking his eye-holes with greasy ropes of flesh. Ankh noticed – bizarrely – that the tentacles were adorned with thousands and thousands of tiny bristles. What were they for?
The single eye jerked wide open, the single pupil fixated on Ankh.
Ankh thrashed, hundreds of volts of bioelectricity coursing through his body. As he slowly came back online, he noticed the thing's smell: coppery like burnt blood, but with a chemical overtone to it and more than a hint of dung. He slumped, a few last crackles of lightning lancing between the little bristles and his mail. So that's what the bristles are for, he thought inanely. He felt himself being shifted and he opened his eyes, saw through a gap in the tentacles the beholder -
No! He would not die like this!
But what could he do?
Stupid question with an obvious answer: magic.
Ankh closed his eyes. The circular symbols of the Spelltongue flickered across his mind again, tapping into the fifth force of the universe. He pushed, reaching across into the soggy mass of flesh that was the Beholder's head and initiating a mind war.
The eye closed.
It pushed back.
Ankh swore, in his own mind. The Beholder could use magic! He thought again, diverting a tiny portion of his concentration from the mind war – damn! It was gaining on him! - to initiate a distraction, something bright and annoying. Another sequence of glyphs, and a flare went off in front of the Beholder's eye.
Nothing. He put all his concentration into beating the Beholder, put it was too strong, it was pushing him back inside the confines of his own skull and he was going to die -
Suddenly, the Beholder's concentration vanished. Suspiciously, Ankh probed forward – no traps, no nothing. What was going on?
Equally suddenly, the tentacles holding Ankh up went slack and he thudded to the ground, breaking – no, attenuating; Ankh just managed to keep his concentration – the mind war. He pushed forward – the Beholder was diverting some of its concentration again! He had to work fast – and -
He reached into the utterly alienness of the Beholder's mind. Indescribable images of hellish places flickered in front of his eyes, smells and sounds and horrible things -
He imagined a mailed Lanciar's fist around the Beholder's mind, and snapped it shut. The creature's thoughts squelched into infantile, dysfunctional nothingness, its intelligence reduced to a vegetable state, its usefulness nil. He opened his eyes, saw the creature swaying in front of him, its tentacles drifting. He ran forward, took a running jump – as much as he could in his armour – and rammed his sword through the Beholder's eye.
From behind the thing's settling bulk, Jurian Pasha stepped, without his horse.
“I thought you could use the assistance,” he smiled, wiping blood off his blade, “but my horse disagreed.”
Vellarion the Demented cursed in a language older than life and turned. The rift through which he had summoned the beholder was still open. If he ran, which he did, bony legs flailing out desperately, he might reach it -
A hand grabbed his shoulder and a sword tucked itself under his chin.
“You aren't going anywhere.” Ankh whispered.

A Minor Clarification

For those who came here in search of communists, the Blue Dragons are communist. Just thought I'd clear that up. That's all. Yep.

The Shai Qadi Ninja I

Constantine fumed. And it wasn't the heat.
For when he had, at last, found Duke Scalax... ha. He remembered it well. He and that hideous would-be ally of his, Kantor, the Nimble Mind, had strode triumphantly into Scalax's command pavilion.
“I am,” Constantine had declared, grandiosely, “the man who brings you Tyrenea.”
“Out.” Scalax had said to Kantor. “I don't care what message of world-shatteringly revolutionary importance you bring, it can wait until I've dealt with this moron.”
“Moron, sir?!”
“How did you do it?” Scalax asked, curtly, and Constantine had explained – slightly nonplussed – how he'd gotten to Tyrene, been captured, and had been on his way to the headsman's block when the people of the city, already annoyed at their being neutral in the Dragon War, had rioted at the prospect of executing Lanciars.
"The Tyreneans are an Akaric people, like us - " he had explained.
"I know that." Scalax had interrupted, frigidly.
"Well, there was this ethnic solidarity movement going on – helped by the corruption in the Patriarchal government. They took over the city – well, the Patriarch gave it to them – and sent me, along with four thousand Tyrenean soldiers as a gesture of goodwill, to ask you to install a native Lanciarial government in the city."
"So you survived by luck."
"Well - "
"Lanciar Constantine, through your reckless foolishness, you could have lost your own life, the lives of ninety of your comrades, and you could have brought the wrath of Tyrenea down on us, leaving us fighting a two-front war!" Scalax slammed his fist into the table, jumping all the cups and inkpots on it. "I should have you farming some bog back home for the rest of your life!"
"Sir, with all - "
"SILENCE!!!" Scalax bellowed. "I don't care whether or not you succeeded. Luckily for you, the rest of the command does – I cannot even strip you of your rank. But I can do this."
And that was how Constantine had ended up in southern Lannding, while the main force moved towards Lanndar, searching for a phantom.
Oh, the Shai Qadi Ninja – as this phantom called himself – was fearsome enough, and the stories circulating about this creature would turn a grown man's stomach, but he was only one man. Why Constantine had been given ten Cataphracts and sent off into the wilderness for one man... He balled his fists unconsciously.
Further north, close to the Urglenn Mountains where the sly little Ersian folk made their homes, Lannding was reasonably fertile, but the landscape that Constantine and his ten Cataphracts pushed their horses through was a dry dustbowl of a place, the dirt beneath their feet too fine even to achieve the status of sand. Blasted, sun-cracked orange cliffs loomed on either side of the ravine through which they passed; the sun, red like a bloody mouth, dribbled its glare on the shattered landscape. To the left, the vast plateau and sun-scorched peak of Barrowmount, Grave of Cities, loomed: not even the Shai Qadi folk of the desert would go near the mountain. There was common sense in that, of course – the mountain was tall, treacherous, and uninhabitable except by rock wyrms and the like – but there was an element of superstition as well.
Constantine felt inclined to note an element of superstition in the existence of the Shai Qadi Ninja also.
"Where did the last villagers say they'd seen him?"
"They said he headed this way, sir."
"Well, I don't see him..."
"That's only because I don't want you to, Lanciar."
There he was. Right in front of them, standing on a rock, black-blue robes rippling in a sudden wind, hand on his scimitar, face wreathed in black.
I hate it when bad guys do that, Constantine thought.
"I imagine you are the Shai Qadi Ninja." Constantine remarked. "Are the stories about you true?" Behind him, he heard the soft whirr and woody wrenching of gastraphetes being prepared to fire.
"I call myself the Shai Qadi Ninja, true. You are called Constantine. You are a Decanus among the Lanciars and you recently captured Tyrenea."
I hate it when bad guys do that too.
"Mr... aah, Ninja, I am placing you under arrest by the authority of the Archduchy of Akar and Tyrenea on charges of membership of the illegal Blue Dragon organisation, assault, rape - "
"Spare me." The man jumped down from the rock and strode towards Constantine. "You are a man of great potential, Constantine of Akar, and my goddess Benet would ardently desire your service."
"What are you talking about? Benet is my goddess."
"The other Benet, Constantine, the other Benet. The one whose servitors are the Amen Ur, whose home is the hellish city of Delirium, and whose worship the Blue Dragons have taken up, Constantine. Membership of the Amenurites is very exclusive, Constantine. Had I the choice, you would be dead right now. But I was, aah, obliged to offer you ingress."
"Rubbish!" Constantine snorted. "I don't want to get into your damn cult. Lanciars, kill him."
That was when everything went wrong.
The rocks came alive. Blue-robed men with composite bows, like the Shai Qadi Ninja save that their faces, lined and brown, were visible, popped up from the canyon all around. And I hate when bad guys do that too, Constantine thought irately. But these were Shai Qadis, longtime allies of Akar.
"Shai Qadi people!" he shouted, holding his hands up and ignoring the Ninja.
"Kill them." the Ninja ordered dismissively in Salkiri. "But leave the leader for me."
A few gastraphetes bolts spat out wildly, someone cursed in Salkiri. There was a whirring sound and a chorus of grunts.
When Constantine turned around, all his Lanciars were dead.
"You should have accepted my offer!" the Shai Qadi Ninja bellowed -
- and stepped back as Constantine's sword snicked through the air where his head had been moments before.
"Come here, you coward!" Constantine roared in turn, his sword held out in front of him, shield forgotten by his side. The black-robed bandit considered for a moment.
"Feather him." he ordered.
One arrow took Constantine in the shoulder, another in the leg, and a third in the small of his back. He jerked forward, his helmet concealing the widening of his eyes as the pain kicked in.
The bandit sauntered forward and kicked the Lanciar off his feet. Constantine hit the ground, rolled over, snapping the arrow in his back. The sun burned down on him until the Shai Qadi Ninja's shadow shaded him.
"You've wasted your first chance." he whispered. "Live and reconsider." Then he was gone.
Constantine gritted his teeth, moaning in the dry dust of Lannding. There would be hell to pay for this, he vowed.
Or rather, hell would pay for this.

The End of the Beginning

Zorlac stumbled blindly through the carnage, eyes wild, fingertips sizzling. He had lost Zanticus somewhere – well, he had lost most of him. There was an arm somewhere back that had looked a lot like Zanticus' -
No! Oh Bopol, he shouldn't think of that! That arm had probably washed Zorlac's smallclothes or something! Oh Bopol! Who was going to wash Zorlac's smallclothes now? He couldn't do it himself! Oh gods...
Maybe he should have taken the arm along. No, it wouldn't be any use to Zanticus now. Oh gods...
"Zorlac!" Could it be... It was!
"Zanticus! Yes!" They ran towards each other, splashing through the reddened muck, as friends reuniting on a battlefield tend to do.
"Zorlac, it's good to see you – ow! Why are your fingers so hot?" Zorlac peeled himself off of his minion.
"Oh, it's magic, Zanticus. Flinging fireballs and all." he answered airily.
"Really?"
"That and that near-miss with the laser."
"Listen, Zorlac, there's someone who wants to talk to you..."
"Mage!" a dry voice roared. "Mage!" Zorlac turned around.
"Duke Scalax. My old enemy." The bony, ancient monarch picked his way through the carrion to rivet his cold gaze on Zorlac.
"I know you don't like me, son, but I trust you have a reasonable head on you. You saw what we just fought – those lightning guns - "
"Lasers. Lasers, we call them."
"Lasers. We need means to combat these lasers and whatever other tricks the Blue Dragons may have up their sleeves, and you know – probably better than I do – how unexplored, how mysterious, Elleria is. I am leaving it up to you to go out and find some way to fight the Blue Dragons. That is a request, not an order."
"Why me?"
"You are the most able." Zorlac puffed up like a preening peacock.
"Well, then, I'll most certainly do it."

* * *

That wasn't all that happened. Days passed.
Ankh closed his eyes, raised his hands towards the statue in the proper position of adulation, and tried to sink into the cool reflectiveness of prayer. But every time he closed his eyes, the visions would come again.
Flashing. Screams. A field of corpses, dotted by bonfires and watered with blood. Men with the swarthy, long-limbed look of the Eastern Duchy about them, chasing down pale Kamareans. Flashing, horizontal lightnings – like the sort thrown by wizards out of tales – striking down Lanciars, and these coming out of strange, pipe-festooned tubes gunned by dark-skinned Lanndings. A thousand ends leaped into his head, grinning Eastern bandits driving axe blades into thrashing Lanciars, Lanndings coolly gunning down dozens of red-coated Kamareans, and every so often, an Easterner or Lannding falling to a Lanciar or Kamarean. Kamareans – and a few Lanciars – turning on their erstwhile allies, shouting the supremacy of the Blue Dragon. Lanndings and Easterners outnumbered ten to one, driving forward into the red ranks and silver-armoured phalanxes of their foes with the savage certainty of victory, the balance tipped by the strange lightning-guns.
Ankh tried to banish the images, but nothing worked. He tried to imagine himself back in the chapel at Magia, the closest thing he had to a home. That almost worked; it wasn't the soft red stone of the walls that gave his pretense the lie, or the ever-present din of Salkir filtering through the walls, in the end, but the heat. The Badlands, where Magia was situated, were hotter than this, but whatever way the Lanciars built their buildings, they were always cold on the inside – like the Lanciars themselves. Ankh was, technically, a Lanciar, but – for having been born outside the caste, for having been inducted in on the basis of his intelligence and magical ability - he would always remain something of an outsider.
And therein, he suspected, lay his problem. He was a magician; not the most gifted, but more able than most to affect that universal force which itself affected all sentient beings. But even though most people couldn't use magic, they were still detectable with it. What Ankh was detecting through his visions was a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.
As if the visions themselves hadn't told him that.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and Ankh turned around to see the Osting ambassador from the north. The corpulent man – or not-quite-man; the Ostings, apparently, belonged to a different subspecies of human – looked at all the statues adorning the walls of the chapel.
"I can't understand you dwarfs at all." he began, but quietly – though Ankh was the only worshipper in the chapel. "What is the point of addressing your prayers to the Dead God of the Desert, like the Farhighters do, if he's dead? What is the point of having a god and not building temples or sacrificing to him, like the Kamareans? And what is the point of this zoo you call a pantheon?" The Osting ran his eyes around the statues.
"Hadr is represented as a human." Ankh answered coldly.
"Every zoo needs a keeper. The gods of the north, though... the world is a conflict between nature and artifice. We understand this in Ostmargue. Animals and the unenlightened thrash around amidst the chaos of nature, drowning themselves in the relentless green tide that can be evidenced in the thousand lost cities of Elleria – consider the ancient, fallen civilisation of Mistocre. Are not her cities swallowed by the greenery?"
"So it would seem."
"The enlightened strive to leave the chaos of nature behind and become artificial. The gods of Ostmargue are beings who have achieved this feat."
"Machine-gods." Ankh extrapolated, flatly.
"Yes."
"At least a zoo doesn't need batteries." The Osting laughed: under normal circumstances, he probably would have had a deep, jolly laugh, but there was a brittle, forced edge to it. Ankh thanked the gods that he had remembered that machines need batteries; there were few enough machines in Akar.
"Tell me about your gods, dwarf."
"Tell me what you came here to say, giant."
"Tell me about your gods, Lanciar, and steel yourself while you do it. You will want to be prepared to take this news." Ankh took a deep breath; he was rarely discomforted, but what with the visions...
"The rabbit? She is Benet, queen of the gods."
"How did a rabbit become queen of the gods?? Surely you'd have issues dividing up your inheritance..." The Osting chuckled again. Ankh didn't laugh.
"Oh, was that a joke? I'm sorry, I have no sense of humour. To answer your question, it was bequeathed to her by Bil, the Soulforger. The Soulforger made the earth and all its plants and animals, and all the peoples that lived on it. Lastly, he created the other gods, each with a specific purpose. Benet's purpose was to rule, even over him."
"That was altruistic of him." the Osting remarked.
"He's a god, he's not like other people." Ankh answered, keeping a completely straight face while saying so. "In any case, he created Muir – the fish – to rule the seas; he created Cera, Bera, and Trichos to answer for the beasts of the wild, he made the Leafscale for the plants and the farmers, he made Gibann – the grinning man – to teach humanity the basics of civilisation and to take care of thieves and rogues; and he made Greenskin Blackeye – it's obvious who he is – to teach humanity magic and mathematics. He made White Pyk and Bathyrax, the Sheltering Shadow, to ward humanity – though against what is never specified. Second-last he made Hadr, the Herald of the Gods, to summon the gods and the faithful should they ever be needed; and last of all, he made Benet, the youngest of the Gods, to act as queen."
"And have you a hell?"
"When the world was newly-created, so the myth goes, it attracted the attention of a horde of demonic creatures, only a few of whom are named – Miclose the Starwyrm; Black Pyk – we don't know of any connection between it and White Pyk; Nightpinion, the Shadow in the Sky; all sorts. Interestingly, a supreme demon is alluded to but not named."
"Fascinating."
"Surely. In any case, Bil made the... aah... place, I suppose... and called it Delirium, locking all the demons away into it. But some lesser demons escaped – the myth goes, they prowl the oceans to this day, sailing on the Scabbard's Whisper, a demon-ship. In response, Bil took the city – Delirium manifests itself as a city, so it would seem – and cast it outside the boundaries of our universe, however you choose to interpret that. Interestingly," Ankh continued in a dry, flat voice, his mind elsewhere, "there was a cult in Mistocre, in an Akarean colony, about a century ago whose stated aim was to free these demons from Delirium. It even corrupted a few Lanciars in the end. When the Lanciars stormed the stronghold, half of them came out raving mad about the 'shoggoth-masters', the 'dark ones from beyond the stars', 'the power of the stone', and all sorts of similar rubbish. There was a gelatinous, acidic mass – apparently dead, if it was ever alive – which the Lanciars identified as a 'shoggoth', and there was a stone artefact as well. I believe the artefact is now in the vaults of Magia." Ankh took a deep breath. "I can't talk any longer. Tell me what you have to say."
"Ah... there was a battle. Twenty-seven thousand Green Dragons clashed with eight thousand Lanndings and Easterners."
"The Green Dragons were slaughtered." Ankh answered flatly.
"It was a Pyrrhic victory." Ankh closed his eyes and thanked the gods whose chapel he was in. A victory! "The Lanndings brought large numbers of... aah... lightning guns, for lack of a better term, with them. No-one can count the dead, but it looks like thirteen or fourteen thousand Kamareans and five thousand Lanciars died. Duke Scalax led the countercharge himself, when the Green Dragons were on the point of breaking; the Easterners fought well, so it would seem, but the Lanndings broke and fled. The entire opposing army was slaughtered, at huge cost in life, and twenty of these lightning-guns were captured. The Kamareans are in a huge fuss over it; apparently they had prophesied the technology but had not developed it. No-one knows how the Lanndings developed it, or if they didn't, who they got it from."
"Another mystery. But Elleria has plenty of mysteries. Where is Scalax now?"
"He was planning to invade Lannding when the message left, so I imagine he must be almost at Lanndar by now." Ankh closed his eyes. They'd won. Gods, it had been a close victory, but they'd won.
"Is that all."
"That is all."
"Do you know if the Shahanshah has given me leave to depart?" His pulse quickened – once they were done conquering Lannding, he might return to Magia and -
"He has not."
"What?"
"In celebration of the news, he has ordered an expedition to Aspherna, to the east. And he wants you to come."

* * *

Nor was that the extent of it either.
"Where are we now?" Constantine asked the commander of the Tyreneans, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. Guilder turned the map upside down, shook it a bit – for some reason – scanned the surrounding landscape – miles and miles of stony, sandy half-desert that could have been in any one of a thousand places in Lannding or the Eastern Duchy – then looked at Constantine, and shrugged.
"Lannding, sir? Possibly?"
"Oh Benet's bones. I've got ninety Lanciars and four thousand Tyreneans the former Patriarch has given and I can't even find Lanndar. Can we find anything??!"
"Ahh, sir..."
"I mean, Benet's bones, it's not a big country, Lannding! In fact, it's actually quite a small country! More of a city-state, really!"
"Sir?"
"It could even be classed as a province if you dispute the legality of Lannding's - "
"Sir?"
"What?"
"I think something may have found us."
Constantine looked at the... the... the thing settling itself comfortably onto the soil and disgorging more things onto the soil as if this were the most natural thing in the world. He rubbed his eyes. He pinched his cheek. He rubbed his eyes again.
"Is this how you humans greet each other?" the towering, slimy-skinned creature asked, in gravelly and heavily accented but grammatically perfect Akarean Mistocren.
"Umm... not traditionally, no."
"Well, I bid you greetings in the name of Kahruisge, the city beneath the waves." the creature said, in what it probably thought was a pleasant voice. Constantine couldn't take his eyes off of it. It was nine foot tall and had slimy skin and a big wedge-shaped head with a little tentacley tuft on its chin and it had black robes like they showed Megas with in the statues. It was alien. "I am Kantor, the Nimble Mind, and this is my nephew, Altyr the Curious. I have studied your endearingly primitive race for many years, and I would like to propose an alliance with the great human kingdom of Akar."
"Aaah..."
"No pressure. Mull over it. I'm sure we have much we could offer each other."
"Aaah..."
"Take your time."

'Pwned' - A Lesson in Literary Pwnage

Today I read the first two chapters of 'Pwned' by Erika Mitchell.
It was good. In fact, it was very, very good.
The title is a dead giveaway, as anyone with a background in computer gaming would know: 'pwned', for all the luddites, is the computer gamer's favourite synonym for 'walloped', 'smashed', 'steamrollered', 'gazeboed', or any other one of those wonderful, weird and wacky words which all mean intense and unrelenting pain for the subject. According to the trailer, the 'pwnage' inherent in the title applies to the protagonist, Sean Boxer – a gamer, of course, and a writer, who spends his life playing Starcraft II and writing mystery books about faraway places. And the 'pwnage' being applied to Mr. Boxer is when he shows up in Korea for a Starcraft tournament – and gets nailed by the FBI. Yikes.
All this I found out from the video trailer, a fascinating link at the top of this page ( http://www.erika-mitchell.com/books/pwned/pwned-chapters-1-2/ ) which features a hilariously appropriate speech-bubble dialogue alongside the voiceover (in my opinion, the trailer's weakest point – the man's voice makes you want to go to sleep), and also a bevy of amusing comments from Ms. Mitchell's assorted friends, acquaintances and minions. The other weak point regarding the trailer would be that it reveals quite a lot of the story – for example, it gives away not only that Sean gets arrested by the FBI, but that his arch-enemy, fellow Starcraft nerd and (in the trailer's wonderfully apt words) 'douche' Norman, has somehow orchestrated this.
And now for the chapters.
There is nothing like being dropped right into the middle of the action, and we surely are here, for no sooner than we open the theoretical pages of 'Pwned' than Sean from the trailer is leading hordes of imaginary computer-screen people against other hordes of imaginary computer-screen people led by a real person somewhere on the other side of the world. The prose is elegant and pleasant to read, yet not opaque or literary (consider: 'Light caught motes of dust drifting through the air, further illuminating the mess that had snuck up on his living room.', or 'People emerged from the void that existed behind his closed eyelids, their conflicts and characteristics wrapped around each of them like cauls.', describing his writing. I don't even know what a caul is!!!) A lot of Sean's character is shown to us, describing a moderately successful geek, slightly bitter at the world, who hides from the real world in his computer games and his writing (and who also insists on spelling perfectly – just like me. I thought I was the only one who did that). We are also introduced to Tabby, awkward yet pretty, and in whom Sean professes no interest whatsoever (I don't believe it for a minute). Therefore, before the first two (very short) chapters have ended, we know two of the main characters and are impressed by the author's use of language. On the negative side, while Tabby gets plenty of description time, it's not obvious what Sean looks like – aside from assurances that he's blond and bespectacled, a category of people including millions.
Personally, I think this book is excellent; in fact, if I wasn't penniless, I'd have bought it myself already. I would certainly recommend it if you are one of Ms. Mitchell's friends, acquaintances and/or minions, although a further general recommendation would be impossible without the rest of the book.
That's it. Can't think of anything else to say.