Warsinger by James Baldwin (most important books of all time txt) 📕

and a [Sandworm Juvenile] burst up out of its tunnel. It snatched two of the larvae in its massive antlike jaws, not even seeming to notice we were there. It didn't notice the line, either: the thing was so massive that it simply tore the cable free, sending it flying into the air. Suri shouted in alarm as she swung down, clinging to the rope, and struck the side of the building with enough force to drive the wind out of her.

“Nope! Bad!” I threw myself to my belly, caught the cable, and hauled back. “Karalti! Grab the slack and pull!”

Karalti grunted with effort behind me, and the cable started to slide up over the edge of the roof. I could feel Suri climbing, but the building itself was starting to lean toward the hole - a lean that intensified as the sandworm thrashed around to snatch another larva in its mouth.

“Why is it eating its own babies!?” Karalti cried.

“Bugs don't give a fuck.” I let go of the cable and held my arms out to Suri. “Come on!”

Suri clapped a hand into mine, and used the rope and me to pull herself. She stumbled forward a step, then tagged me and started to run for the other side.

There was a crunch below our feet. We fled with her, battling gravity as the building toppled. It was at a thirty-degree grade when we reached the edge of the roof. The courtyard to the temple was not far - but now we had to jump down, then run across the writhing sand to get to it.

“Go go go!” Suri almost booted Karalti off. I followed her, landing neatly on the soft ground, and sprinted forward as Suri crashed down behind us. The cannibal sandworm party immediately stopped as they aggro’d onto us. I was conscious of every vibrating step as we cut for the temple and the promise of solid ground.

The earth behind us swelled. Karalti reached the paving stones first, while I turned to wait for Suri. She struggled forward, red-faced with effort as the sand began to suck at her feet like water. I clasped her forearm and pulled her up.

“Jeez. That was a bit much,” she gasped as we stumbled away. The back of the [Juvenile Sandworm] arched out of the sand, but as soon as we hit the masonry, it promptly forgot about us and went to prey on the larvae again.

“At least we can be pretty sure no one followed us here.” I grimaced.

“Sure hope not. Come on. The adults can obviously get up here, given they laid all these eggs.” Suri equipped her armor, slammed her helmet visor down, and drew her sword.

The temple was not like any other church of Khors I'd seen. His image was painted and carved into every surface: a great red dragon with clawless hands and a three-layered, finned crest, standing behind a bearded human smith. Both dragon and man held their hands in the same position, as if offering the tools they carried to the viewer. The dragon held a gem in his left and a stylus in his right. The human offered a hammer and a levelling staff. They both had fathomless, glowing crimson eyes. I couldn’t help but note that the human aspect of Khors strongly resembled the Arch Smith, with his long false red beard.

The architecture was almost the same as the tomb we'd found in Karhad, with murals, squared doorways, carved pillars, and inlaid sheets of engraved metal. A text-engraved band of electrum had been set into the walls all the way around the entrance, but I didn’t recognize the script. We had to make do with the pictures. In one, the dual aspect of Khors was slaying a multi-limbed black beast that had to be a Drachan. In the next image, he was drawing a black, oily smoke from it into a giant crystal that gleamed violet through his fingers. The next picture was clearly an image of Khors breathing life into some of the Warsingers. Withering Rose took pride of place, its golden humanoid frame, huge flaming halo and angular starburst helmet clearly recognizable, but there were others in the mural as well. One was an eerie, slim, matte-black machine with a fan of whiplike limbs. Another had a bestial look about it, with a hunched stance and a muzzle that reminded me of a werewolf. I paused in front of it and took a snapshot for Rin.

“Ohh, I don’t recognize that script!” she said. “I’ll look it up. I think these pictures give us some idea of what they built in this plant, though.”

“Yeah?” I moved down the wall, taking more pictures with the HUD’s camera for posterity.

“Yeah. I think they made the engine cores here,” Rin said. “Everything I’ve read suggests that the Warsingers were each animated by the spirit of a captured Drachan, kind of like a bound servitor, and the Drachan’s energy was the main power drive of the Warsinger. That’s why I don’t think we’re going to be able to rebuild Nocturne Lament. When you destroyed it, you destroyed the core as well.”

“Maybe that’s how it became a revenant… the Drachan spirit got loose and animated it, or something.” I recalled the malicious glee the machine had radiated as it woodchippered my poor quazi. “That thing was evil as shit.”

Suri wrinkled her nose. “How does a Void Creature have a spirit of any kind, though? I’d’ve thought they had whatever the opposite of a soul is.”

“Well, that’s the interesting thing,” Rin said. “I think there’s some kind of… like… well, my tentative name for what the Warsingers and other huge Artifacts might have used is called a ‘vacuum drive’. The Warsingers had a negative-positive energy exchange polarity.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, mana is nifty because it can take a charge from almost anything, including thoughts, and the expression of the energy is incredibly mutable. But all mana is functionally positive energy, right? It’s always trying to expand. In L.A.E.H.T systems, for example